Ancient astronomers were able to differentiate between stars and planets, as stars remain relatively fixed over the centuries while planets will move an appreciable amount during a comparatively short time.

Calendars of the world have often been set by observations of the Sun and Moon (marking the day, month and year), and were important to agricultural societies, in which the harvest depended on planting at the correct time of year, and for which the nearly full moon was the only lighting for night-time travel into city markets.[2]

Since 1990 our understanding of prehistoric Europeans has been radically changed by discoveries of ancient astronomical artifacts throughout Europe, the artifacts demonstrate that Neolithic and Bronze Age Europeans had a sophisticated knowledge of mathematics and astronomy.

Among the discoveries are:

Bone sticks from locations like Africa and Europe from possibly as long ago as 35,000 BCE are marked in ways that tracked the moon's phases.[3]

The Warren Field calendar in the Dee River valley of Scotland's Aberdeenshire. First excavated in 2004 but only in 2013 revealed as a find of huge significance, it is to date the world´s oldest known calendar, created around 8000 BC and predating all other calendars by some 5,000 years, the calendar takes the form of an early Mesolithic monument containing a series of 12 pits which appear to help the observer track lunar months by mimicking the phases of the moon. It also aligns to sunrise at the winter solstice, thus coordinating the solar year with the lunar cycles, the monument had been maintained and periodically reshaped, perhaps up to hundreds of times, in response to shifting solar/lunar cycles, over the course of 6,000 years, until the calendar fell out of use around 4,000 years ago.[4][5][6][7]

The Nebra sky disc is a Bronze Age bronze disc that was buried in Germany, not far from the Goseck circle, around 1600 BC. It measures about 30 cm diameter with a mass of 2.2 kg and displays a blue-green patina (from oxidization) inlaid with gold symbols. Found by archeological thieves in 1999 and recovered in Switzerland in 2002, it was soon recognized as a spectacular discovery, among the most important of the 20th century.[9][10] Investigations revealed that the object had been in use around 400 years before burial (2000 BC), but that its use had been forgotten by the time of burial, the inlaid gold depicted the full moon, a crescent moon about 4 or 5 days old, and the Pleiades star cluster in a specific arrangement forming the earliest known depiction of celestial phenomena. Twelve lunar months pass in 354 days, requiring a calendar to insert a leap month every two or three years in order to keep synchronized with the solar year's seasons (making it lunisolar), the earliest known descriptions of this coordination were recorded by the Babylonians in 6th or 7th centuries BC, over one thousand years later. Those descriptions verified ancient knowledge of the Nebra sky disc's celestial depiction as the precise arrangement needed to judge when to insert the intercalary month into a lunisolar calendar, making it an astronomical clock for regulating such a calendar a thousand or more years before any other known method.[11]

The Kokino site, discovered in 2001, sits atop an extinct volcanic cone at an elevation of 1,013 metres (3,323 ft), occupying about 0.5 hectares overlooking the surrounding countryside in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. A Bronze Ageastronomical observatory was constructed there around 1900 BC and continuously served the nearby community that lived there until about 700 BC, the central space was used to observe the rising of the sun and full moon. Three markings locate sunrise at the summer and winter solstices and at the two equinoxes. Four more give the minimum and maximum declinations of the full moon: in summer, and in winter. Two measure the lengths of lunar months. Together, they reconcile solar and lunar cycles in marking the 235 lunations that occur during 19 solar years, regulating a lunar calendar, on a platform separate from the central space, at lower elevation, four stone seats (thrones) were made in north-south alignment, together with a trench marker cut in the eastern wall. This marker allows the rising sun's light to fall on only the second throne, at midsummer (about July 31), it was used for ritual ceremony linking the ruler to the local sun god, and also marked the end of the growing season and time for harvest.[12]

The origins of Western astronomy can be found in Mesopotamia, the "land between the rivers" Tigris and Euphrates, where the ancient kingdoms of Sumer, Assyria, and Babylonia were located. A form of writing known as cuneiform emerged among the Sumerians around 3500–3000 BC. Our knowledge of Sumerian astronomy is indirect, via the earliest Babylonian star catalogues dating from about 1200 BC, the fact that many star names appear in Sumerian suggests a continuity reaching into the Early Bronze Age. Astral theology, which gave planetary gods an important role in Mesopotamian mythology and religion, began with the Sumerians, they also used a sexagesimal (base 60) place-value number system, which simplified the task of recording very large and very small numbers. The modern practice of dividing a circle into 360 degrees, of 60 minutes each, began with the Sumerians, for more information, see the articles on Babylonian numerals and mathematics.

Classical sources frequently use the term Chaldeans for the astronomers of Mesopotamia, who were, in reality, priest-scribes specializing in astrology and other forms of divination.

The first evidence of recognition that astronomical phenomena are periodic and of the application of mathematics to their prediction is Babylonian. Tablets dating back to the Old Babylonian period document the application of mathematics to the variation in the length of daylight over a solar year. Centuries of Babylonian observations of celestial phenomena are recorded in the series of cuneiform tablets known as the Enūma Anu Enlil, the oldest significant astronomical text that we possess is Tablet 63 of the Enūma Anu Enlil, the Venus tablet of Ammi-saduqa, which lists the first and last visible risings of Venus over a period of about 21 years and is the earliest evidence that the phenomena of a planet were recognized as periodic. The MUL.APIN, contains catalogues of stars and constellations as well as schemes for predicting heliacal risings and the settings of the planets, lengths of daylight measured by a water clock, gnomon, shadows, and intercalations. The Babylonian GU text arranges stars in 'strings' that lie along declination circles and thus measure right-ascensions or time-intervals, and also employs the stars of the zenith, which are also separated by given right-ascensional differences.[16]

A significant increase in the quality and frequency of Babylonian observations appeared during the reign of Nabonassar (747–733 BC), the systematic records of ominous phenomena in Babylonian astronomical diaries that began at this time allowed for the discovery of a repeating 18-year cycle of lunar eclipses, for example. The Greek astronomer Ptolemy later used Nabonassar's reign to fix the beginning of an era, since he felt that the earliest usable observations began at this time.

The last stages in the development of Babylonian astronomy took place during the time of the Seleucid Empire (323–60 BC); in the 3rd century BC, astronomers began to use "goal-year texts" to predict the motions of the planets. These texts compiled records of past observations to find repeating occurrences of ominous phenomena for each planet. About the same time, or shortly afterwards, astronomers created mathematical models that allowed them to predict these phenomena directly, without consulting past records. A notable Babylonian astronomer from this time was Seleucus of Seleucia, who was a supporter of the heliocentric model.

Astronomy in the Indian subcontinent dates back to the period of Indus Valley Civilization during 3rd millennium BCE, when it was used to create calendars,[18] as the Indus Valley civilization did not leave behind written documents, the oldest extant Indian astronomical text is the Vedanga Jyotisha, dating from the Vedic period.[19] Vedanga Jyotisha describes rules for tracking the motions of the Sun and the Moon for the purposes of ritual, during the 6th century, astronomy was influenced by the Greek and Byzantine astronomical traditions.[18][20]

Astronomy was advanced during the Shunga Empire and many star catalogues were produced during this time, the Shunga period is known[according to whom?] as the "Golden age of astronomy in India". It saw the development of calculations for the motions and places of various planets, their rising and setting, conjunctions, and the calculation of eclipses.

Indian astronomers by the 6th century believed that comets were celestial bodies that re-appeared periodically, this was the view expressed in the 6th century by the astronomers Varahamihira and Bhadrabahu, and the 10th-century astronomer Bhattotpala listed the names and estimated periods of certain comets, but it is unfortunately not known how these figures were calculated or how accurate they were.[23]

Bhāskara II (1114–1185) was the head of the astronomical observatory at Ujjain, continuing the mathematical tradition of Brahmagupta. He wrote the Siddhantasiromani which consists of two parts: Goladhyaya (sphere) and Grahaganita (mathematics of the planets). He also calculated the time taken for the Earth to orbit the sun to 9 decimal places, the Buddhist University of Nalanda at the time offered formal courses in astronomical studies.

The Ancient Greeks developed astronomy, which they treated as a branch of mathematics, to a highly sophisticated level, the first geometrical, three-dimensional models to explain the apparent motion of the planets were developed in the 4th century BC by Eudoxus of Cnidus and Callippus of Cyzicus. Their models were based on nested homocentric spheres centered upon the Earth, their younger contemporary Heraclides Ponticus proposed that the Earth rotates around its axis.

A different approach to celestial phenomena was taken by natural philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, they were less concerned with developing mathematical predictive models than with developing an explanation of the reasons for the motions of the Cosmos. In his Timaeus, Plato described the universe as a spherical body divided into circles carrying the planets and governed according to harmonic intervals by a world soul.[26] Aristotle, drawing on the mathematical model of Eudoxus, proposed that the universe was made of a complex system of concentric spheres, whose circular motions combined to carry the planets around the earth,[27] this basic cosmological model prevailed, in various forms, until the 16th century.

In the 3rd century BC Aristarchus of Samos was the first to suggest a heliocentric system, although only fragmentary descriptions of his idea survive.[28]Eratosthenes, using the angles of shadows created at widely separated regions, estimated the circumference of the Earth with great accuracy.[29]

Greek geometrical astronomy developed away from the model of concentric spheres to employ more complex models in which an eccentric circle would carry around a smaller circle, called an epicycle which in turn carried around a planet, the first such model is attributed to Apollonius of Perga and further developments in it were carried out in the 2nd century BC by Hipparchus of Nicea. Hipparchus made a number of other contributions, including the first measurement of precession and the compilation of the first star catalog in which he proposed our modern system of apparent magnitudes.

The Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek astronomical observational device for calculating the movements of the Sun and the Moon, possibly the planets, dates from about 150–100 BC, and was the first ancestor of an astronomical computer. It was discovered in an ancient shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, the device became famous for its use of a differential gear, previously believed to have been invented in the 16th century, and the miniaturization and complexity of its parts, comparable to a clock made in the 18th century. The original mechanism is displayed in the Bronze collection of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, accompanied by a replica.

Depending on the historian's viewpoint, the acme or corruption of physical Greek astronomy is seen with Ptolemy of Alexandria, who wrote the classic comprehensive presentation of geocentric astronomy, the Megale Syntaxis (Great Synthesis), better known by its Arabic title Almagest, which had a lasting effect on astronomy up to the Renaissance. In his Planetary Hypotheses, Ptolemy ventured into the realm of cosmology, developing a physical model of his geometric system, in a universe many times smaller than the more realistic conception of Aristarchus of Samos four centuries earlier.

The precise orientation of the Egyptian pyramids affords a lasting demonstration of the high degree of technical skill in watching the heavens attained in the 3rd millennium BC, it has been shown the Pyramids were aligned towards the pole star, which, because of the precession of the equinoxes, was at that time Thuban, a faint star in the constellation of Draco.[31] Evaluation of the site of the temple of Amun-Re at Karnak, taking into account the change over time of the obliquity of the ecliptic, has shown that the Great Temple was aligned on the rising of the midwinter sun.[32] The length of the corridor down which sunlight would travel would have limited illumination at other times of the year.

Astronomy played a considerable part in religious matters for fixing the dates of festivals and determining the hours of the night, the titles of several temple books are preserved recording the movements and phases of the sun, moon and stars. The rising of Sirius (Egyptian: Sopdet, Greek: Sothis) at the beginning of the inundation was a particularly important point to fix in the yearly calendar.

And after the Singer advances the Astrologer (ὡροσκόπος), with a horologium (ὡρολόγιον) in his hand, and a palm (φοίνιξ), the symbols of astrology, he must know by heart the Hermetic astrological books, which are four in number. Of these, one is about the arrangement of the fixed stars that are visible; one on the positions of the sun and moon and five planets; one on the conjunctions and phases of the sun and moon; and one concerns their risings.[33]

The Astrologer's instruments (horologium and palm) are a plumb line and sighting instrument[clarification needed]. They have been identified with two inscribed objects in the Berlin Museum; a short handle from which a plumb line was hung, and a palm branch with a sight-slit in the broader end. The latter was held close to the eye, the former in the other hand, perhaps at arms length, the "Hermetic" books which Clement refers to are the Egyptian theological texts, which probably have nothing to do with HellenisticHermetism.[34]

From the tables of stars on the ceiling of the tombs of Rameses VI and Rameses IX it seems that for fixing the hours of the night a man seated on the ground faced the Astrologer in such a position that the line of observation of the pole star passed over the middle of his head. On the different days of the year each hour was determined by a fixed star culminating or nearly culminating in it, and the position of these stars at the time is given in the tables as in the centre, on the left eye, on the right shoulder, etc. According to the texts, in founding or rebuilding temples the north axis was determined by the same apparatus, and we may conclude that it was the usual one for astronomical observations; in careful hands it might give results of a high degree of accuracy.

Astronomy in China has a long history. Detailed records of astronomical observations were kept from about the 6th century BC, until the introduction of Western astronomy and the telescope in the 17th century. Chinese astronomers were able to precisely predict eclipses.

Much of early Chinese astronomy was for the purpose of timekeeping, the Chinese used a lunisolar calendar, but because the cycles of the Sun and the Moon are different, astronomers often prepared new calendars and made observations for that purpose.

Astrological divination was also an important part of astronomy. Astronomers took careful note of "guest stars" which suddenly appeared among the fixed stars, they were the first to record a supernova, in the Astrological Annals of the Houhanshu in 185 AD. Also, the supernova that created the Crab Nebula in 1054 is an example of a "guest star" observed by Chinese astronomers, although it was not recorded by their European contemporaries. Ancient astronomical records of phenomena like supernovae and comets are sometimes used in modern astronomical studies.

Maya astronomical codices include detailed tables for calculating phases of the Moon, the recurrence of eclipses, and the appearance and disappearance of Venus as morning and evening star. The Maya based their calendrics in the carefully calculated cycles of the Pleiades, the Sun, the Moon, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and also they had a precise description of the eclipses as depicted in the Dresden Codex, as well as the ecliptic or zodiac, and the Milky Way was crucial in their Cosmology.[35] A number of important Maya structures are believed to have been oriented toward the extreme risings and settings of Venus. To the ancient Maya, Venus was the patron of war and many recorded battles are believed to have been timed to the motions of this planet. Mars is also mentioned in preserved astronomical codices and early mythology.[36]

The Arabic and the Persian world under Islam had become highly cultured, and many important works of knowledge from Greek astronomy and Indian astronomy and Persian astronomy were translated into Arabic, used and stored in libraries throughout the area. An important contribution by Islamic astronomers was their emphasis on observational astronomy[38] This led to the emergence of the first astronomical observatories in the Muslim world by the early 9th century.[39][40]Zij star catalogues were produced at these observatories.

In the late 10th century, a huge observatory was built near Tehran, Iran, by the astronomer Abu-Mahmud al-Khujandi who observed a series of meridiantransits of the Sun, which allowed him to calculate the tilt of the Earth's axis relative to the Sun. He noted that measurements by earlier (Indian, then Greek) astronomers had found higher values for this angle, possible evidence that the axial tilt is not constant but was in fact decreasing;[44][45] in 11th-century Persia, Omar Khayyám compiled many tables and performed a reformation of the calendar that was more accurate than the Julian and came close to the Gregorian.

9th century diagram of the positions of the seven planets on 18 March 816.

After the significant contributions of Greek scholars to the development of astronomy, it entered a relatively static era in Western Europe from the Roman era through the 12th century, this lack of progress has led some astronomers to assert that nothing happened in Western European astronomy during the Middle Ages.[52] Recent investigations, however, have revealed a more complex picture of the study and teaching of astronomy in the period from the 4th to the 16th centuries.[53]

Western Europe entered the Middle Ages with great difficulties that affected the continent's intellectual production. The advanced astronomical treatises of classical antiquity were written in Greek, and with the decline of knowledge of that language, only simplified summaries and practical texts were available for study, the most influential writers to pass on this ancient tradition in Latin were Macrobius, Pliny, Martianus Capella, and Calcidius.[54] In the 6th century Bishop Gregory of Tours noted that he had learned his astronomy from reading Martianus Capella, and went on to employ this rudimentary astronomy to describe a method by which monks could determine the time of prayer at night by watching the stars.[55]

In the 7th century the English monk Bede of Jarrow published an influential text, On the Reckoning of Time, providing churchmen with the practical astronomical knowledge needed to compute the proper date of Easter using a procedure called the computus. This text remained an important element of the education of clergy from the 7th century until well after the rise of the Universities in the 12th century.[56]

The range of surviving ancient Roman writings on astronomy and the teachings of Bede and his followers began to be studied in earnest during the revival of learning sponsored by the emperor Charlemagne.[57] By the 9th century rudimentary techniques for calculating the position of the planets were circulating in Western Europe; medieval scholars recognized their flaws, but texts describing these techniques continued to be copied, reflecting an interest in the motions of the planets and in their astrological significance.[58]

Building on this astronomical background, in the 10th century European scholars such as Gerbert of Aurillac began to travel to Spain and Sicily to seek out learning which they had heard existed in the Arabic-speaking world. There they first encountered various practical astronomical techniques concerning the calendar and timekeeping, most notably those dealing with the astrolabe. Soon scholars such as Hermann of Reichenau were writing texts in Latin on the uses and construction of the astrolabe and others, such as Walcher of Malvern, were using the astrolabe to observe the time of eclipses in order to test the validity of computistical tables.[59]

By the 12th century, scholars were traveling to Spain and Sicily to seek out more advanced astronomical and astrological texts, which they translated into Latin from Arabic and Greek to further enrich the astronomical knowledge of Western Europe, the arrival of these new texts coincided with the rise of the universities in medieval Europe, in which they soon found a home.[60] Reflecting the introduction of astronomy into the universities, John of Sacrobosco wrote a series of influential introductory astronomy textbooks: the Sphere, a Computus, a text on the Quadrant, and another on Calculation.[61]

In the 14th century, Nicole Oresme, later bishop of Liseux, showed that neither the scriptural texts nor the physical arguments advanced against the movement of the Earth were demonstrative and adduced the argument of simplicity for the theory that the earth moves, and not the heavens. However, he concluded "everyone maintains, and I think myself, that the heavens do move and not the earth: For God hath established the world which shall not be moved."[62] In the 15th century, cardinal Nicholas of Cusa suggested in some of his scientific writings that the Earth revolved around the Sun, and that each star is itself a distant sun, he was not, however, describing a scientifically verifiable theory of the universe.

Galileo was considered the father of observational astronomy, he was among the first to use a telescope to observe the sky and after constructing a 20x refractor telescope he discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter in 1610. This was the first observation of satellites orbiting another planet, he also found that our Moon had craters and observed (and correctly explained) sunspots. Galileo noted that Venus exhibited a full set of phases resembling lunar phases. Galileo argued that these observations supported the Copernican system and were, to some extent, incompatible with the favored model of the Earth at the center of the universe,[63] he may have even observed the planet Neptune in 1612 and 1613, over 200 years before it was discovered, but it is unclear if he was aware of what he was looking at.[64][65]

Plate with figures illustrating articles on astronomy, from the 1728 Cyclopaedia

Although the motions of celestial bodies had been qualitatively explained in physical terms since Aristotle introduced celestial movers in his Metaphysics and a fifth element in his On the Heavens, Johannes Kepler was the first to attempt to derive mathematical predictions of celestial motions from assumed physical causes.[66][67] Combining his physical insights with the unprecedentedly accurate naked-eye observations made by Tycho Brahe,[68][69][70] Kepler discovered the three laws of planetary motion that now carry his name.[71]

Outside of England, Newton's theory took some time to become established. Descartes' theory of vortices held sway in France, and Huygens, Leibniz and Cassini accepted only parts of Newton's system, preferring their own philosophies. It wasn't until Voltaire published a popular account in 1738 that the tide changed;[72] in 1748, the French Academy of Sciences offered a reward for solving the perturbations of Jupiter and Saturn which was eventually solved by Euler and Lagrange. Laplace completed the theory of the planets towards the end of the century.

In the 19th century it was discovered that, when decomposing the light from the Sun, a multitude of spectral lines were observed (regions where there was less or no light). Experiments with hot gases showed that the same lines could be observed in the spectra of gases, specific lines corresponding to unique elements, it was proved that the chemical elements found in the Sun (chiefly hydrogen and helium) were also found on Earth. During the 20th century spectroscopy (the study of these lines) advanced, especially because of the advent of quantum physics, that was necessary to understand the observations.

Although in previous centuries noted astronomers were exclusively male, at the turn of the 20th century women began to play a role in the great discoveries; in this period prior to modern computers, women at the United States Naval Observatory (USNO), Harvard University, and other astronomy research institutions began to be hired as human "computers," who performed the tedious calculations while scientists performed research requiring more background knowledge. [1] A number of discoveries in this period were originally noted by the women "computers" and reported to their supervisors. For example, at the Harvard Observatory Henrietta Swan Leavitt discovered the cepheid variable star period-luminosity relation which she further developed into a method of measuring distance outside of our solar system. Annie Jump Cannon, also at Harvard, organized the stellar spectral types according to stellar temperature. In 1847, Maria Mitchell discovered a comet using a telescope. According to Lewis D. Eigen, Cannon alone, "in only 4 years discovered and catalogued more stars than all the men in history put together."[75] Most of these women received little or no recognition during their lives due to their lower professional standing in the field of astronomy, although their discoveries and methods are taught in classrooms around the world, few students of astronomy can attribute the works to their authors or have any idea that there were active female astronomers at the end of the 19th century.

Most of our current knowledge was gained during the 20th century, with the help of the use of photography, fainter objects were observed. Our sun was found to be part of a galaxy made up of more than 1010 stars (10 billion stars), the existence of other galaxies, one of the matters of the great debate, was settled by Edwin Hubble, who identified the Andromeda nebula as a different galaxy, and many others at large distances and receding, moving away from our galaxy.

^Nilsson, Martin P. (1920), Primitive Time-Reckoning. A Study in the Origins and Development of the Art of Counting Time among the Primitive and Early Culture Peoples, Skrifter utgivna av Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundet i Lund, 1, Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, OCLC458893999

^Saliba, George (1994). "Early Arabic Critique of Ptolemaic Cosmology: A Ninth-Century Text on the Motion of the Celestial Spheres". Journal for the History of Astronomy. 25: 115–141 [116]. doi:10.1177/002182869402500205.

^Henry Smith Williams, The Great Astronomers (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930), pp. 99–102 describes "the record of astronomical progress" from the Council of Nicea (325 AD) to the time of Copernicus (1543 AD) on four blank pages.

^The average error of Tycho's stellar observations, as recorded in his observational logs, varied from 32.3" to 48.8" for different instruments. Table 4 in Walter G. Wesley, "The Accuracy of Tychho Brahe's Instruments,"Journal for the History of Astronomy, 9(1978): 42–53.

^An error of as much as 3' was introduced into some of the stellar positions published in Tycho's star catalog due to Tycho's application of an erroneous ancient value of parallax and his neglect of refraction. See Dennis Rawlins, "Tycho's 1004 Star Catalog", DIO 3 (1993), p. 20.

Star map
–
A star chart is another name for a chore chart. A star chart or star map is a map of the night sky, astronomers divide these into grids to use them more easily. They are used to identify and locate objects such as stars, constellations. They have been used for navigation since time immemorial. Note that a star chart differs from a catalog, which is

1.
A celestial map from the 17th century, by the Dutch cartographer Frederik de Wit

Su Song
–
Su Song was the engineer of a hydro-mechanical astronomical clock tower in medieval Kaifeng, which employed the use of an early escapement mechanism. Sus clock tower featured the oldest known endless power-transmitting chain drive, called the tian ti, or celestial ladder. The clock tower had 133 different clock jacks to indicate and sound the hours

1.
蘇頌 (Sū Sòng)

2.
The original diagram of Su's book showing the inner workings of his clocktower, for more information, click this thumbnail picture.

Printing
–
Printing is a process for reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest examples include Cylinder seals and other such as the Cyrus Cylinder. The earliest known form of printing came from China dating to before 220 A. D. Later developments in printing include the type, first developed by Bi Sheng in China around 1040 AD.

Astronomy
–
Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It applies mathematics, physics, and chemistry, in an effort to explain the origin of those objects and phenomena and their evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and comets, while the phenomena include supernovae explosions, gamma ray burs

Natural science
–
Natural science is a branch of science concerned with the description, prediction, and understanding of natural phenomena, based on observational and empirical evidence. Mechanisms such as review and repeatability of findings are used to try to ensure the validity of scientific advances. Natural science can be divided into two branches, life scienc

3.
Plato (left) and Aristotle in a 1509 painting by Raphael. Plato rejected inquiry into natural philosophy as against religion, while his student, Aristotle, created a body of work on the natural world that influenced generations of scholars.

4.
Isaac Newton is widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time.

Ancient history
–
Ancient history is the aggregate of past events from the beginning of recorded human history and extending as far as the Early Middle Ages or the Postclassical Era. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with Sumerian Cuneiform script, the term classical antiquity is often used to refer to history in the Old World from the b

2.
The Mediterranean in c. the 4th century BC. Phoenician cities are labelled in yellow, Greek cities in red, and other cities in grey.

3.
Eastern Hemisphere in 500 BC.

Religion
–
Religions have sacred histories and narratives, which may be preserved in sacred scriptures, and symbols and holy places, that aim mostly to give a meaning to life. Religions may contain symbolic stories, which are said by followers to be true, that have the side purpose of explaining the origin of life. Traditionally, faith, in addition to reason,

Mythological
–
Mythology refers variously to the collected myths of a group of people or to the study of such myths. Myths are the people tell to explain nature, history. Myth is a feature of every culture, mythologizing continues, as shown in contemporary mythopoeia such as urban legends and the expansive fictional mythoi created by fantasy novels and comics. A

Archaeoastronomy
–
Archaeoastronomy is the study of how people in the past have understood the phenomena in the sky, how they used these phenomena and what role the sky played in their cultures. It is often twinned with ethnoastronomy, the study of skywatching in contemporary societies. Archaeoastronomy uses a variety of methods to uncover evidence of past practices

2.
Early archaeoastronomy surveyed Megalithic constructs in the British Isles, at sites like Auglish in County Londonderry, in an attempt to find statistical patterns

3.
It has been proposed that Maya sites such as Uxmal were built in accordance with astronomical alignments.

4.
"El Caracol" a possible observatory temple at Chichen Itza.

Astrology
–
Astrology is the study of the movements and relative positions of celestial objects as a means for divining information about human affairs and terrestrial events. Throughout most of its history astrology was considered a tradition and was common in academic circles, often in close relation with astronomy, alchemy, meteorology. It was present in po

2.
Marcantonio Raimondi engraving, 15th century

3.
'The Zodiac Man' a diagram of a human body and astrological symbols with instructions explaining the importance of astrology from a medical perspective. From a 15th century Welsh manuscript

Prehistory
–
Prehistory means literally before history, from the Latin word for before, præ, and Greek ιστορία. Neighbouring civilisations were the first to follow, most other civilisations reached the end of prehistory during the Iron Age. The period when a culture is written about by others, but has not developed its own writing is known as the protohistory o

1.
Massive stone pillars at Göbekli Tepe, in southeast Turkey, erected for ritual use by early Neolithic people 11,000 years ago.

Western World
–
The Western world or the West is a term usually referring to different nations, depending on the context, most often including at least part of Europe. There are many accepted definitions about what they all have in common, the Western world is also known as the Occident. The concept of the Western part of the earth has its roots in Greco-Roman civ

Astrology and astronomy
–
Astrology and astronomy were archaically treated together, and were only gradually separated in Western 17th century philosophy with the rejection of astrology. During the later part of the period, astronomy was treated as the foundation upon which astrology could operate. Since the 18th century they have come to be regarded as separate disciplines

1.
Early science, particularly geometry and astronomy/astrology (astronomia), was connected to the divine for most medieval scholars. The compass in this 13th-century manuscript is a symbol of God's act of creation, as many believed that there was something intrinsically divine or perfect that could be found in circles.

4.
An engraving by Albrecht Dürer featuring Mashallah, from the title page of the De scientia motus orbis (Latin version with engraving, 1504). As in many medieval illustrations, the compass here is an icon of religion as well as science, in reference to God as the architect of creation.

Planet
–
The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, astrology, science, mythology, and religion. Several planets in the Solar System can be seen with the naked eye and these were regarded by many early cultures as divine, or as emissaries of deities. As scientific knowledge advanced, human perception of the planets changed, in 2006, the International

Culture
–
Culture can be defined in numerous ways. In the words of anthropologist E. B, Tylor, it is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. The Cambridge English Dictionary states that culture is the way of life, especially the customs and bel

Mythology
–
Mythology refers variously to the collected myths of a group of people or to the study of such myths. Myths are the people tell to explain nature, history. Myth is a feature of every culture, mythologizing continues, as shown in contemporary mythopoeia such as urban legends and the expansive fictional mythoi created by fantasy novels and comics. A

Spiritual being
–
The English word spirit, from Latin spiritus breath, has many different meanings and connotations, most of them relating to a non-corporeal substance contrasted with the material body. It can also refer to a subtle as opposed to gross material substance, the word spirit is often used metaphysically to refer to the consciousness or personality. e. A

Drought
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A drought is a period of below-average precipitation in a given region, resulting in prolonged shortages in its water supply, whether atmospheric, surface water or ground water. A drought can last for months or years, or may be declared after as few as 15 days and it can have a substantial impact on the ecosystem and agriculture of the affected reg

Season
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A season is a division of the year marked by changes in weather, ecology and hours of daylight. Seasons result from the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. During May, June, and July, the northern hemisphere is exposed to direct sunlight because the hemisphere faces the sun. The same is true of the hemisphere in November, December. It is the tilt of

1.
Red and green trees in spring

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A tree in winter

3.
The six ecological seasons

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The four calendar seasons, depicted in an ancient Roman mosaic from Tunisia.

Tide
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Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon and the Sun and the rotation of the Earth. Some shorelines experience a semi-diurnal tide—two nearly equal high and low tides each day, other locations experience a diurnal tide—only one high and low tide each day. A mixed tide—t

3.
In Maine (U.S.) low tide occurs roughly at moonrise and high tide with a high moon, corresponding to the simple gravity model of two tidal bulges; at most places however, moon and tides have a phase shift.

Priest
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A priest or priestess, is a person authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites, in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of and their office or position is the priesthood, a term which

Astronomical object
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An astronomical object or celestial object is a naturally occurring physical entity, association, or structure that current astronomy has demonstrated to exist in the observable universe. In astronomy, the object and body are often used interchangeably. Examples for astronomical objects include planetary systems, star clusters, nebulae and galaxies

Divinity
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Such things are regarded as divine due to their transcendental origins or because their attributes or qualities are superior or supreme relative to things of the Earth. Divine things are regarded as eternal and based in truth, while things are regarded as ephemeral. Such things that may qualify as divine are apparitions, visions, prophecies, miracl

Stonehenge
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Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England,2 miles west of Amesbury and 8 miles north of Salisbury. Stonehenges ring of standing stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the most dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, archaeologists believe it was constructed from 3000 BC to 2000 BC. The surrounding

1.
Stonehenge in August 2014

2.
Plan of Stonehenge in 2004. After Cleal et al. and Pitts. Italicised numbers in the text refer to the labels on this plan. Trilithon lintels omitted for clarity. Holes that no longer, or never, contained stones are shown as open circles. Stones visible today are shown coloured

3.
Stonehenge 1. After Cleal et al.

Social function
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Structural functionalism, or simply functionalism, is a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. This approach looks at society through an orientation, which is a broad focus on the social structures that shape society as a whole. This approach looks at both s

Calendar
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A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, a date is the designation of a single, specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a record of such a system. A calendar can also mean a list of planned eve

3.
A Hindu almanac (pancanga) for the year 1871/2 from Rajasthan (Library of Congress, Asian Division)

4.
The Payment of the Tithes (The tax-collector), also known as Village Lawyer. Signed .P.BREVGHEL

Day
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In common usage, it is either an interval equal to 24 hours or daytime, the consecutive period of time during which the Sun is above the horizon. The period of time during which the Earth completes one rotation with respect to the Sun is called a solar day, several definitions of this universal human concept are used according to context, need and

Month
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A month is a unit of time, used with calendars, which is approximately as long as a natural period related to the motion of the Moon, month and Moon are cognates. The traditional concept arose with the cycle of phases, such months are synodic months. From excavated tally sticks, researchers have deduced that people counted days in relation to the M

1.
Key concepts

2.
On top of the knuckles (yellow): 31 days Between the knuckles (blue): 30 days February (red) has 28 or 29 days.

3.
Physical lunar features

Year
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A year is the orbital period of the Earth moving in its orbit around the Sun. Due to the Earths axial tilt, the course of a year sees the passing of the seasons, marked by changes in weather, the hours of daylight, and, consequently, vegetation and soil fertility. In temperate and subpolar regions around the globe, four seasons are recognized, spri

1.
Key concepts

Agriculture
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Agriculture is the cultivation and breeding of animals, plants and fungi for food, fiber, biofuel, medicinal plants and other products used to sustain and enhance human life. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of human civilization. The study of agriculture is known as agricultural science, the history of agriculture dates back thousan

Gregorian calendar
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The Gregorian calendar is internationally the most widely used civil calendar. It is named after Pope Gregory XIII, who introduced it in October 1582, the calendar was a refinement to the Julian calendar involving a 0. 002% correction in the length of the year. The motivation for the reform was to stop the drift of the calendar with respect to the

4.
Detail of the pope's tomb by Camillo Rusconi (completed 1723); Antonio Lilio is genuflecting before the pope, presenting his printed calendar.

Roman calendar
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The Roman calendar is the calendar used by the Roman kingdom and republic. The original calendar consisted of 10 months beginning in spring with March and these months ran for 38 nundinal cycles, each forming a kind of eight day week ended by religious rituals and a public market. The winter period was used to create January and February. The legen

2.
Drawing of the fragmentary Fasti Antiates Maiores (ca. 60 BC), a Roman calendar from before the Julian reform, with the seventh and eighth months still named Quintilis ("QVI") and Sextilis ("SEX"), and the intercalary month ("INTER") in the far righthand column (see enlarged)

Lunar calendar
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A lunar calendar is a calendar based upon cycles of the Moons phases, in contrast to solar calendars based solely upon the solar year. A purely lunar calendar is also distinguished from lunisolar calendars whose lunar months are brought into alignment with the year through some process of intercalation. The details of when months begin varies from

1.
Physical lunar features

Julius Caesar
–
Gaius Julius Caesar, known as Julius Caesar, was a Roman politician, general, and notable author of Latin prose. He played a role in the events that led to the demise of the Roman Republic. In 60 BC, Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey formed an alliance that dominated Roman politics for several years. Their attempts to power as Populares were opposed by t

1.
The Tusculum portrait, perhaps the only surviving statue created during Caesar's lifetime.

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The extent of the Roman Republic in 40 BC after Caesar's conquests.

Calendar reform
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Calendar reform, properly calendrical reform, is any significant revision of a calendar system. The term sometimes is used instead for a proposal to switch to a different calendar, most calendars have several rules which could be altered by reform, Whether and how days are grouped into subdivisions such as months and weeks, and days outside those s

BCE
–
Common Era or Current Era is a year-numbering system for the Julian and Gregorian calendars that refers to the years since the start of this era, i. e. since AD1. The preceding era is referred to as before the Common or Current Era, the Current Era notation system can be used as a secular alternative to the Dionysian era system, which distinguishes

1.
Key concepts

Julian calendar
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The Julian calendar, proposed by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, was a reform of the Roman calendar. It took effect on 1 January 45 BC, by edict, the Julian calendar gains against the mean tropical year at the rate of one day in 128 years. For the Gregorian the figure is one day in 3,030 years, the difference in the average length of the year between Julia

2.
This is a visual example of the official date change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian

3.
Key concepts

Leap year
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A leap year is a calendar year containing one additional day added to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year. By inserting an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected, a year that is not a leap year is called a common year. For example, in the Gregorian calendar, each year has 366 days in

1.
A Swedish pocket calendar from the year 2008 showing February 29

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February 1900 calendar showing that 1900 was not a leap year

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In the older Roman Missal, feast days falling on or after February 24 are celebrated one day later in leap year.

Nebra sky disk
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The Nebra sky disk is a bronze disk of around 30 centimetres diameter and a weight of 2.2 kilograms, with a blue-green patina and inlaid with gold symbols. These are interpreted generally as a sun or full moon, a lunar crescent, two golden arcs along the sides, marking the angle between the solstices, were added later. A final addition was another

Berlin Gold Hat
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The Berlin Gold Hat or Berlin Golden Hat is a Late Bronze Age artefact made of thin gold leaf. It served as the covering on a long conical brimmed headdress. It is now in the Neues Museum on Museum Island in Berlin, in a room by itself with an explanatory display. The Berlin Gold Hat is the best preserved specimen among the four known conical Golde

Europe
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Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europ

3.
A medieval T and O map from 1472 showing the three continents as domains of the sons of Noah — Asia to Sem (Shem), Europe to Iafeth (Japheth), and Africa to Cham (Ham)

4.
Early modern depiction of Europa regina ('Queen Europe') and the mythical Europa of the 8th century BC.

Mathematics
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Mathematics is the study of topics such as quantity, structure, space, and change. There is a range of views among mathematicians and philosophers as to the exact scope, Mathematicians seek out patterns and use them to formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proof, when mathematical stru

Scotland
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Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles, the

1.
Edinburgh Castle. Human habitation of the site is dated back as far as the 9th century BC, although the nature of this early settlement is unclear.

Aberdeenshire
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Aberdeenshire is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. It takes its name from the old County of Aberdeen which had different boundaries. Modern Aberdeenshire includes all of what was once Kincardineshire, as well as part of Banffshire, the old boundaries are still officially used for a few purposes, namely land registration and lieutenancy. Aber

Excavation (archaeology)
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In archaeology, excavation is the exposure, processing and recording of archaeological remains. An excavation site or dig is a site being studied, such a site excavation concerns itself with a specific archaeological site or a connected series of sites, and may be conducted over as little as several weeks to over a number of years. Numerous special

Mesolithic
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In archaeology, the Mesolithic is the culture between Paleolithic and Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used for areas outside northern Europe, Mesolithic has different time spans in different parts of Eurasia. It was originally post-Pleistocene, pre-agricultural material in northwest Europe about 10,000 to 5000 BC, in the archaeology of

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Mesolithic microliths

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Two skeletons of women aged between 25 and 35 years, dated between 6740 and 5680 BP, both of whom died a violent death. Found at Téviec, France in 1938.

Goseck circle
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The Goseck circle is a Neolithic structure in Goseck in the Burgenlandkreis district in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Its construction is dated to approximately the 49th century BC, and it may thus be the oldest and best known of the circular enclosures associated with the Central European Neolithic. More controversially, it also may be one of the oldest

4.
Information boards at the entrance of the solar observatory of Goseck

Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular

Linear pottery culture
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The Linear Pottery culture is a major archaeological horizon of the European Neolithic, flourishing circa 5500–4500 BC. It is abbreviated as LBK, and is known as the Linear Band Ware, Linear Ware, Linear Ceramics or Incised Ware culture. The densest evidence for the culture is on the middle Danube, the upper and middle Elbe, and it represents a maj

1.
Linear pottery: "The vessels are oblated globes, cut off on the top and slightly flattened on the bottom suggestive of a gourd."— Frank Hibben Note the imitation of painted bands by incising the edges of the band. Stroked Ware is shown in the upper left corner.

1.
Letter sent by the high-priest Lu'enna to the king of Lagash (maybe Urukagina), informing him of his son's death in combat, c. 2400 BC, found in Girsu.

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Overview map of the Ancient Near East in the 15th century BC (Middle Assyrian period), showing the core territory of Assyria with its two major cities Assur and Nineveh wedged between Babylonia downstream (to the south-east) and the states of Mitanni and Hatti upstream (to the north-west).

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Assyrian attack on a town with archers and a wheeled battering ram, 865–860 BC

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Jehu, king of Israel, bows before Shalmaneser III of Assyria, 825 BC

Babylonia

1.
The extent of the Babylonian Empire at the start and end of Hammurabi's reign

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Babylonian clay tablet YBC 7289 with annotations. The diagonal displays an approximation of the square root of 2 in four sexagesimal figures, 1 24 51 10, which is good to about six decimal digits. 1 + 24/60 + 51/60 2 + 10/60 3 = 1.41421296... The tablet also gives an example where one side of the square is 30, and the resulting diagonal is 42 25 35 or 42.4263888...

Divination

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This man in Rhumsiki, Cameroon, attempts to tell the future by interpreting the changes in position of various objects as caused by a freshwater crab through the practice of nggàm.

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Engraving of a crowned Ptolemy being guided by the muse Astronomy, from Margarita Philosophica by Gregor Reisch, 1508. Although Abu Ma'shar believed Ptolemy to be one of the Ptolemies who ruled Egypt after the conquest of Alexander the title ‘King Ptolemy’ is generally viewed as a mark of respect for Ptolemy's elevated standing in science.

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Star map
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A star chart is another name for a chore chart. A star chart or star map is a map of the night sky, astronomers divide these into grids to use them more easily. They are used to identify and locate objects such as stars, constellations. They have been used for navigation since time immemorial. Note that a star chart differs from a catalog, which is a listing or tabulation of astronomical objects for a particular purpose. Tools utilizing a star chart include the astrolabe and the planisphere, the oldest known star chart may be a carved ivory Mammoth tusk that was discovered in Germany in 1979. This artifact is 32,500 years old and has a carving that resembles the constellation Orion, a drawing on the wall of the Lascaux caves in France has a graphical representation of the Pleiades open cluster of stars. This is dated from 33,000 to 10,000 years ago, another star chart panel, created more than 21,000 years ago, was found in the La Tête du Lion grotto. The bovine in this panel may represent the constellation Taurus, with a representing the Pleiades just above it. The oldest accurately dated star chart appeared in ancient Egyptian astronomy in 1534 BC, the earliest known star catalogues were compiled by the ancient Babylonian astronomers of Mesopotamia in the late 2nd millennium BC, during the Kassite Period. The oldest Chinese astronomy records date to before the Warring States period, the oldest Chinese graphical representation of the sky is a lacquer box dated to 430 BC, although this depiction does not show individual stars. The Farnese Atlas is a 2nd-century copy of a Hellenistic era statue depicting the Titan Atlas holding the sphere on his shoulder. It is the oldest surviving depiction of the ancient Greek constellations, because of precession, the positions of the constellations slowly change over time. By comparing the positions of the 41 constellations against the grid circles, based upon this information, the constellations were catalogued at 125 ±55 BC. This evidence indicates that the catalogue of the Greek astronomer Hipparchus was used. A Roman era example of a representation of the night sky is the Egyptian Dendera zodiac. This is a bas relief sculpting on a ceiling at the Dendera Temple complex and it is a planisphere depicting the zodiac in graphical representations. However, individual stars are not plotted, the oldest surviving manuscript star chart was discovered in the Mogao Caves along the Silk Road – the Dunhuang Star Chart

2.
Su Song
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Su Song was the engineer of a hydro-mechanical astronomical clock tower in medieval Kaifeng, which employed the use of an early escapement mechanism. Sus clock tower featured the oldest known endless power-transmitting chain drive, called the tian ti, or celestial ladder. The clock tower had 133 different clock jacks to indicate and sound the hours, Su Songs treatise about the clock tower, Xinyi Xiangfayao, has survived since its written form in 1092 and official printed publication in 1094. The book has been analyzed by historians, such as Joseph Needham. The clock itself, however, was dismantled by the invading Jurchen army in AD1127, and although attempts were made to reassemble it, the Xinyi Xiangfayao was Sus best-known treatise, but the polymath compiled other works as well. He completed a large celestial atlas of several maps, several terrestrial maps. The latter discussed related subjects on mineralogy, zoology, botany and they thought that advanced mechanical clockworks were new to China and that these mechanisms were something valuable that Europeans could offer to the Chinese. Su Song was a Hokkien who was born in modern-day Fujian, like a contemporary, Shen Kuo, Su Song was a polymath, a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different interests. From an early age, his interests in astronomy and calendrical science led him onto a path as a state bureaucrat. In his spare time he was fond of writing poetry, which he used to praise the works of such as the painter Li Gonglin. He also was an antiquarian and collector of old artworks from previous dynasties, after serving in the Ministry of Personnel, he became a Minister of Justice in 1086. Eventually, Su rose to the post of Vice President of the Chancellery Secretariat, among many honorable positions and titles conferred upon him, Su Song was also one of the Deputy Tutors of the Heir Apparent. Historian Liu Heping states that Emperor Zhezong of Song sponsored Su Songs clocktower in 1086 in order to compete with the Liao for scientific and national superiority. In 1081, the court instructed Su Song to compile into a book the diplomatic history of Song-Liao relations, with his extensive knowledge of cartography, Su Song was able to settle a heated border dispute between the Song and Liao dynasties. Furthermore, Su Song must have taken advantage of the findings of his political rival. There were many star maps written before Songs book, but the greatest significance of these star maps by Su Song is, that they represent the oldest extant star maps in printed form. In 1070, Su Song and a team of scholars compiled and edited the Bencao Tujing, which was a treatise on pharmaceutical botany, zoology. In compiling information for pharmaceutical knowledge, Su Song worked with such scholars as Zhang Yuxi, Lin Yi, Zhang Dong

Su Song
–
蘇頌 (Sū Sòng)
Su Song
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The original diagram of Su's book showing the inner workings of his clocktower, for more information, click this thumbnail picture.
Su Song
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A scale model of Su Song's Astronomical Clock Tower
Su Song
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A star map with equidistant cylindrical projection, from Su Song's Xinyi Xiangfayao, 1092

3.
Printing
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Printing is a process for reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest examples include Cylinder seals and other such as the Cyrus Cylinder. The earliest known form of printing came from China dating to before 220 A. D. Later developments in printing include the type, first developed by Bi Sheng in China around 1040 AD. Johannes Gutenberg introduced mechanical movable type printing to Europe in the 15th century, modern large-scale printing is typically done using a printing press, while small-scale printing is done free-form with a digital printer. Though paper is the most common material, it is frequently done on metals, plastics, cloth. On paper it is carried out as a large-scale industrial process and is an essential part of publishing. Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns that was used widely throughout East Asia and it originated in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later on paper. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220 A. D, the earliest surviving woodblock printed fragments are from China. They are of silk printed with flowers in three colours from the Han Dynasty and they are the earliest example of woodblock printing on paper appeared in the mid-seventh century in China. By the ninth century, printing on paper had taken off, by the tenth century,400,000 copies of some sutras and pictures were printed, and the Confucian classics were in print. A skilled printer could print up to 2,000 double-page sheets per day, Printing spread early to Korea and Japan, which also used Chinese logograms, but the technique was also used in Turpan and Vietnam using a number of other scripts. This technique then spread to Persia and Russia and this technique was transmitted to Europe via the Islamic world, and by around 1400 was being used on paper for old master prints and playing cards. However, Arabs never used this to print the Quran because of the limits imposed by Islamic doctrine, block printing, called tarsh in Arabic developed in Arabic Egypt during the ninth-tenth centuries, mostly for prayers and amulets. There is some evidence to suggest that these print blocks made from non-wood materials, possibly tin, lead, the techniques employed are uncertain, however, and they appear to have had very little influence outside of the Muslim world. Though Europe adopted woodblock printing from the Muslim world, initially for fabric, block printing later went out of use in Islamic Central Asia after movable type printing was introduced from China. Block printing first came to Europe as a method for printing on cloth, images printed on cloth for religious purposes could be quite large and elaborate. When paper became relatively easily available, around 1400, the medium transferred very quickly to small religious images

4.
Astronomy
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Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It applies mathematics, physics, and chemistry, in an effort to explain the origin of those objects and phenomena and their evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and comets, while the phenomena include supernovae explosions, gamma ray bursts, more generally, all astronomical phenomena that originate outside Earths atmosphere are within the purview of astronomy. A related but distinct subject, physical cosmology, is concerned with the study of the Universe as a whole, Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history, such as the Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, Egyptians, Nubians, Iranians, Chinese, during the 20th century, the field of professional astronomy split into observational and theoretical branches. Observational astronomy is focused on acquiring data from observations of astronomical objects, theoretical astronomy is oriented toward the development of computer or analytical models to describe astronomical objects and phenomena. The two fields complement each other, with theoretical astronomy seeking to explain the results and observations being used to confirm theoretical results. Astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs can play an active role, especially in the discovery. Amateur astronomers have made and contributed to many important astronomical discoveries, Astronomy means law of the stars. Astronomy should not be confused with astrology, the system which claims that human affairs are correlated with the positions of celestial objects. Although the two share a common origin, they are now entirely distinct. Generally, either the term astronomy or astrophysics may be used to refer to this subject, however, since most modern astronomical research deals with subjects related to physics, modern astronomy could actually be called astrophysics. Few fields, such as astrometry, are purely astronomy rather than also astrophysics, some titles of the leading scientific journals in this field includeThe Astronomical Journal, The Astrophysical Journal and Astronomy and Astrophysics. In early times, astronomy only comprised the observation and predictions of the motions of objects visible to the naked eye, in some locations, early cultures assembled massive artifacts that possibly had some astronomical purpose. Before tools such as the telescope were invented, early study of the stars was conducted using the naked eye, most of early astronomy actually consisted of mapping the positions of the stars and planets, a science now referred to as astrometry. From these observations, early ideas about the motions of the planets were formed, and the nature of the Sun, Moon, the Earth was believed to be the center of the Universe with the Sun, the Moon and the stars rotating around it. This is known as the model of the Universe, or the Ptolemaic system. The Babylonians discovered that lunar eclipses recurred in a cycle known as a saros

5.
Natural science
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Natural science is a branch of science concerned with the description, prediction, and understanding of natural phenomena, based on observational and empirical evidence. Mechanisms such as review and repeatability of findings are used to try to ensure the validity of scientific advances. Natural science can be divided into two branches, life science and physical science. Physical science is subdivided into branches, including physics, space science, chemistry and these branches of natural science may be further divided into more specialized branches. Modern natural science succeeded more classical approaches to natural philosophy, usually traced to ancient Greece, galileo, Descartes, Francis Bacon, and Newton debated the benefits of using approaches which were more mathematical and more experimental in a methodical way. Still, philosophical perspectives, conjectures, and presuppositions, often overlooked, systematic data collection, including discovery science, succeeded natural history, which emerged in the 16th century by describing and classifying plants, animals, minerals, and so on. Today, natural history suggests observational descriptions aimed at popular audiences, philosophers of science have suggested a number of criteria, including Karl Poppers controversial falsifiability criterion, to help them differentiate scientific endeavors from non-scientific ones. Validity, accuracy, and quality control, such as peer review and this field encompasses a set of disciplines that examines phenomena related to living organisms. The scale of study can range from sub-component biophysics up to complex ecologies, biology is concerned with the characteristics, classification and behaviors of organisms, as well as how species were formed and their interactions with each other and the environment. The biological fields of botany, zoology, and medicine date back to periods of civilization. However, it was not until the 19th century that became a unified science. Once scientists discovered commonalities between all living things, it was decided they were best studied as a whole, modern biology is divided into subdisciplines by the type of organism and by the scale being studied. Molecular biology is the study of the chemistry of life, while cellular biology is the examination of the cell. At a higher level, anatomy and physiology looks at the internal structures, constituting the scientific study of matter at the atomic and molecular scale, chemistry deals primarily with collections of atoms, such as gases, molecules, crystals, and metals. The composition, statistical properties, transformations and reactions of these materials are studied, chemistry also involves understanding the properties and interactions of individual atoms and molecules for use in larger-scale applications. Most chemical processes can be studied directly in a laboratory, using a series of techniques for manipulating materials, chemistry is often called the central science because of its role in connecting the other natural sciences. Early experiments in chemistry had their roots in the system of Alchemy, the science of chemistry began to develop with the work of Robert Boyle, the discoverer of gas, and Antoine Lavoisier, who developed the theory of the Conservation of mass. The success of science led to a complementary chemical industry that now plays a significant role in the world economy

Natural science
–
The natural sciences seek to understand how the world and universe around us works. There are five major branches: Chemistry (center), astronomy, earth science, physics, and biology (clockwise from top-left).
Natural science
–
Space missions have been used to image distant locations within the Solar System, such as this Apollo 11 view of Daedalus crater on the far side of the Moon.
Natural science
–
Plato (left) and Aristotle in a 1509 painting by Raphael. Plato rejected inquiry into natural philosophy as against religion, while his student, Aristotle, created a body of work on the natural world that influenced generations of scholars.
Natural science
–
Isaac Newton is widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time.

6.
Ancient history
–
Ancient history is the aggregate of past events from the beginning of recorded human history and extending as far as the Early Middle Ages or the Postclassical Era. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with Sumerian Cuneiform script, the term classical antiquity is often used to refer to history in the Old World from the beginning of recorded Greek history in 776 BC. This roughly coincides with the date of the founding of Rome in 753 BC, the beginning of the history of ancient Rome. In India, ancient history includes the period of the Middle Kingdoms, and, in China. Historians have two major avenues which they take to better understand the ancient world, archaeology and the study of source texts, primary sources are those sources closest to the origin of the information or idea under study. Primary sources have been distinguished from secondary sources, which cite, comment on. Archaeology is the excavation and study of artefacts in an effort to interpret, archaeologists excavate the ruins of ancient cities looking for clues as to how the people of the time period lived. The study of the ancient cities of Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, the city of Pompeii, an ancient Roman city preserved by the eruption of a volcano in AD79. Its state of preservation is so great that it is a window into Roman culture and provided insight into the cultures of the Etruscans. The Terracotta Army, the mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor in ancient China, the discovery of Knossos by Minos Kalokairinos and Sir Arthur Evans. The discovery of Troy by Heinrich Schliemann, most of what is known of the ancient world comes from the accounts of antiquitys own historians. Although it is important to take account the bias of each ancient author. Some of the more notable ancient writers include Herodotus, Thucydides, Arrian, Plutarch, Polybius, Sima Qian, Sallust, Livy, Josephus, Suetonius, furthermore, the reliability of the information obtained from these surviving records must be considered. Few people were capable of writing histories, as literacy was not widespread in almost any culture until long after the end of ancient history, the earliest known systematic historical thought emerged in ancient Greece, beginning with Herodotus of Halicarnassus. He was also the first to distinguish between cause and immediate origins of an event, the Roman Empire was one of the ancient worlds most literate cultures, but many works by its most widely read historians are lost. Indeed, only a minority of the work of any major Roman historian has survived, prehistory is the period before written history. The early human migrations in the Lower Paleolithic saw Homo erectus spread across Eurasia 1.8 million years ago, the controlled use of fire occurred 800,000 years ago in the Middle Paleolithic. 250,000 years ago, Homo sapiens emerged in Africa, 60–70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa along a coastal route to South and Southeast Asia and reached Australia

Ancient history
–
Khafre's Pyramid (4th dynasty) and Great Sphinx of Giza (c. 2500 BC or perhaps earlier)
Ancient history
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The Mediterranean in c. the 4th century BC. Phoenician cities are labelled in yellow, Greek cities in red, and other cities in grey.
Ancient history
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Eastern Hemisphere in 500 BC.

7.
Religion
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Religions have sacred histories and narratives, which may be preserved in sacred scriptures, and symbols and holy places, that aim mostly to give a meaning to life. Religions may contain symbolic stories, which are said by followers to be true, that have the side purpose of explaining the origin of life. Traditionally, faith, in addition to reason, has considered a source of religious beliefs. There are an estimated 10,000 distinct religions worldwide, about 84% of the worlds population is affiliated with one of the five largest religions, namely Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or forms of folk religion. With the onset of the modernisation of and the revolution in the western world. The religiously unaffiliated demographic include those who do not identify with any religion, atheists. While the religiously unaffiliated have grown globally, many of the religiously unaffiliated still have various religious beliefs, about 16% of the worlds population is religiously unaffiliated. The study of religion encompasses a variety of academic disciplines, including theology, comparative religion. Theories of religion offer various explanations for the origins and workings of religion, Religion is derived from the Latin religiō, the ultimate origins of which are obscure. One possible interpretation traced to Cicero, connects lego read, i. e. re with lego in the sense of choose, go over again or consider carefully. The medieval usage alternates with order in designating bonded communities like those of monastic orders, we hear of the religion of the Golden Fleece, of a knight of the religion of Avys. In the ancient and medieval world, the etymological Latin root religio was understood as a virtue of worship, never as doctrine, practice. In the Quran, the Arabic word din is often translated as religion in modern translations and it was in the 19th century that the terms Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Confucianism first emerged. Max Müller characterized many other cultures around the world, including Egypt, Persia, what is called ancient religion today, they would have only called law. Some languages have words that can be translated as religion, but they may use them in a different way. For example, the Sanskrit word dharma, sometimes translated as religion, throughout classical South Asia, the study of law consisted of concepts such as penance through piety and ceremonial as well as practical traditions. Medieval Japan at first had a union between imperial law and universal or Buddha law, but these later became independent sources of power. There is no equivalent of religion in Hebrew, and Judaism does not distinguish clearly between religious, national, racial, or ethnic identities

8.
Mythological
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Mythology refers variously to the collected myths of a group of people or to the study of such myths. Myths are the people tell to explain nature, history. Myth is a feature of every culture, mythologizing continues, as shown in contemporary mythopoeia such as urban legends and the expansive fictional mythoi created by fantasy novels and comics. A cultures collective mythology helps convey belonging, shared and religious experiences, behavioral models, the study of myth began in ancient history. Rival classes of the Greek myths by Euhemerus, Plato and Sallustius were developed by the Neoplatonists, the nineteenth-century comparative mythology reinterpreted myth as a primitive and failed counterpart of science, a disease of language, or a misinterpretation of magical ritual. Recent approaches often view myths as manifestations of psychological, cultural, or societal truths, the term mythology predates the word myth by centuries. It first appeared in the fifteenth-century, borrowed from the Middle French term mythologie, the word mythology, comes from Middle French mythologie, from Late Latin mythologia, from Greek μυθολογία mythología from μῦθος mythos and -λογία -logia. The word mythología appears in Plato, but was used as a term for fiction or story-telling of any kind, combining mỹthos. From Lydgate until the seventeenth or eighteenth-century, mythology was similarly used to mean a moral, fable, from its earliest use in reference to a collection of traditional stories or beliefs, mythology implied the falsehood of the stories being described. It came to be applied by analogy with similar bodies of traditional stories among other cultures around the world. The Greek loanword mythos and Latinate mythus both appeared in English before the first example of myth in 1830, in present use, mythology usually refers to the collected myths of a group of people, but may also mean the study of such myths. For example, Greek mythology, Roman mythology and Hittite mythology all describe the body of myths retold among those cultures, dundes defined myth as a sacred narrative that explains how the world and humanity evolved into their present form. Lincoln defined myth as ideology in narrative form, scholars in other fields use the term myth in varied ways. In a broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story, due to this pejorative sense, some scholars opted for the term mythos. Its use was similarly pejorative and now commonly refers to its Aristotelian sense as a plot point or to a collective mythology. The term is distinguished from didactic literature such as fables. Main characters in myths are usually gods, demigods or supernatural humans, however, many exceptions or combinations exist, as in the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid. Myths are often endorsed by rulers and priests and are linked to religion or spirituality

9.
Archaeoastronomy
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Archaeoastronomy is the study of how people in the past have understood the phenomena in the sky, how they used these phenomena and what role the sky played in their cultures. It is often twinned with ethnoastronomy, the study of skywatching in contemporary societies. Archaeoastronomy uses a variety of methods to uncover evidence of past practices including archaeology, anthropology, astronomy, statistics and probability, because these methods are diverse and use data from such different sources, integrating them into a coherent argument has been a long-term difficulty for archaeoastronomers. Archaeoastronomy fills complementary niches in landscape archaeology and cognitive archaeology, other examples which have brought together ideas of cognition and landscape include studies of the cosmic order embedded in the roads of settlements. Archaeoastronomy can be applied to all cultures and all time periods, the meanings of the sky vary from culture to culture, nevertheless there are scientific methods which can be applied across cultures when examining ancient beliefs. It is perhaps the need to balance the social and scientific aspects of archaeoastronomy which led Clive Ruggles to describe it as, field with academic work of high quality at one end but uncontrolled speculation bordering on lunacy at the other. Nearly two decades later, we can ask the question, Is archaeoastronomy still waiting at the gates of orthodoxy or has it gotten inside the gates. Two hundred years before Michell wrote the above, there were no archaeoastronomers and there were no professional archaeologists, late in the nineteenth century astronomers such as Richard Proctor and Charles Piazzi Smyth investigated the astronomical orientations of the pyramids. The term archaeoastronomy was first used by Elizabeth Chesley Baity in 1973, Clive Ruggles says that Heinrich Nissen, working in the mid-nineteenth century was arguably the first archaeoastronomer. Rolf Sinclair says that Norman Lockyer, working in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, could be called the father of archaeoastronomy. Euan MacKie would place the origin even later, stating. the genesis, MacKie therefore broadly accepted Thoms conclusions and published new prehistories of Britain. In contrast a re-evaluation of Thoms fieldwork by Clive Ruggles argued that Thoms claims of high accuracy astronomy were not fully supported by the evidence and his influence endures and practice of statistical testing of data remains one of the methods of archaeoastronomy. The approach in the New World, where began to consider more fully the role of astronomy in Amerindian civilizations, was markedly different. They had access to sources that the prehistory of Europe lacks such as ethnographies, following the pioneering example of Anthony Aveni, this allowed New World archaeoastronomers to make claims for motives which in the Old World would have been mere speculation. The concentration on historical data led to claims of high accuracy that were comparatively weak when compared to the statistically led investigations in Europe. This came to a head at a meeting sponsored by the International Astronomical Union in Oxford in 1981, the methodologies and research questions of the participants were considered so different that the conference proceedings were published as two volumes. Archaeoastronomy has long seen as an interdisciplinary field that uses written and unwritten evidence to study the astronomies of other cultures. As such, it can be seen as connecting other disciplinary approaches for investigating ancient astronomy, astroarchaeology, history of astronomy, reflecting Archaeoastronomys development as an interdisciplinary subject, research in the field is conducted by investigators trained in a wide range of disciplines

Archaeoastronomy
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The rising Sun illuminates the inner chamber of Newgrange, Ireland, only at the winter solstice.
Archaeoastronomy
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Early archaeoastronomy surveyed Megalithic constructs in the British Isles, at sites like Auglish in County Londonderry, in an attempt to find statistical patterns
Archaeoastronomy
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It has been proposed that Maya sites such as Uxmal were built in accordance with astronomical alignments.
Archaeoastronomy
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"El Caracol" a possible observatory temple at Chichen Itza.

10.
Astrology
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Astrology is the study of the movements and relative positions of celestial objects as a means for divining information about human affairs and terrestrial events. Throughout most of its history astrology was considered a tradition and was common in academic circles, often in close relation with astronomy, alchemy, meteorology. It was present in political circles, and is mentioned in works of literature, from Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer to William Shakespeare, Lope de Vega. Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing, and common belief in it has largely declined, Astrology is now recognized to be pseudoscience. The word astrology comes from the early Latin word astrologia, which derives from the Greek ἀστρολογία—from ἄστρον astron, astrologia later passed into meaning star-divination with astronomia used for the scientific term. Many cultures have attached importance to astronomical events, and the Indians, Chinese, the majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems. Astrology has been dated to at least the 2nd millennium BCE, with roots in systems used to predict seasonal shifts. A form of astrology was practised in the first dynasty of Mesopotamia, Chinese astrology was elaborated in the Zhou dynasty. Hellenistic astrology after 332 BCE mixed Babylonian astrology with Egyptian Decanic astrology in Alexandria, Alexander the Greats conquest of Asia allowed astrology to spread to Ancient Greece and Rome. In Rome, astrology was associated with Chaldean wisdom, after the conquest of Alexandria in the 7th century, astrology was taken up by Islamic scholars, and Hellenistic texts were translated into Arabic and Persian. In the 12th century, Arabic texts were imported to Europe, major astronomers including Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Galileo practised as court astrologers. Astrological references appear in literature in the works of such as Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer. Throughout most of its history, astrology was considered a scholarly tradition and it was accepted in political and academic contexts, and was connected with other studies, such as astronomy, alchemy, meteorology, and medicine. At the end of the 17th century, new concepts in astronomy. Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing, and common belief in astrology has largely declined, Astrology, in its broadest sense, is the search for meaning in the sky. This was a first step towards recording the Moons influence upon tides and rivers, by the 3rd millennium BCE, civilisations had sophisticated awareness of celestial cycles, and may have oriented temples in alignment with heliacal risings of the stars. Scattered evidence suggests that the oldest known references are copies of texts made in the ancient world. The Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa thought to be compiled in Babylon around 1700 BCE, a scroll documenting an early use of electional astrology is doubtfully ascribed to the reign of the Sumerian ruler Gudea of Lagash

Astrology
Astrology
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Marcantonio Raimondi engraving, 15th century
Astrology
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'The Zodiac Man' a diagram of a human body and astrological symbols with instructions explaining the importance of astrology from a medical perspective. From a 15th century Welsh manuscript
Astrology
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The Roman orator Cicero objected to astrology.

11.
Prehistory
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Prehistory means literally before history, from the Latin word for before, præ, and Greek ιστορία. Neighbouring civilisations were the first to follow, most other civilisations reached the end of prehistory during the Iron Age. The period when a culture is written about by others, but has not developed its own writing is known as the protohistory of the culture. By definition, there are no records from human prehistory. Clear techniques for dating were not well-developed until the 19th century and this article is concerned with human prehistory as defined here above. There are separate articles for the history of the Earth. However, for the race as a whole, prehistory ends when recorded history begins with the accounts of the ancient world around the 4th millennium BC. For example, in Egypt it is accepted that prehistory ended around 3200 BC, whereas in New Guinea the end of the prehistoric era is set much more recently. The three-age system is the periodization of prehistory into three consecutive time periods, named for their respective predominant tool-making technologies, Stone Age Bronze Age Iron Age. The notion of prehistory began to surface during the Enlightenment in the work of antiquarians who used the word primitive to describe societies that existed before written records, the first use of the word prehistory in English, however, occurred in the Foreign Quarterly Review in 1836. The main source for prehistory is archaeology, but some scholars are beginning to more use of evidence from the natural and social sciences. This view has been articulated by advocates of deep history, human population geneticists and historical linguists are also providing valuable insight for these questions. Human prehistory differs from history not only in terms of its chronology, restricted to material processes, remains and artifacts rather than written records, prehistory is anonymous. Because of this, reference terms that use, such as Neanderthal or Iron Age are modern labels with definitions sometimes subject to debate. Palaeolithic means Old Stone Age, and begins with the first use of stone tools, the Paleolithic is the earliest period of the Stone Age. The early part of the Palaeolithic is called the Lower Palaeolithic, evidence of control of fire by early humans during the Lower Palaeolithic Era is uncertain and has at best limited scholarly support. The most widely accepted claim is that H. erectus or H. ergaster made fires between 790,000 and 690,000 BP in a site at Bnot Yaakov Bridge, Israel. The use of fire enabled early humans to cook food, provide warmth, Early Homo sapiens originated some 200,000 years ago, ushering in the Middle Palaeolithic

12.
Western World
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The Western world or the West is a term usually referring to different nations, depending on the context, most often including at least part of Europe. There are many accepted definitions about what they all have in common, the Western world is also known as the Occident. The concept of the Western part of the earth has its roots in Greco-Roman civilization in Europe, before the Cold War era, the traditional Western viewpoint identified Western Civilization with the Western Christian countries and culture. Its political usage was changed by the antagonism during the Cold War in the mid-to-late 20th Century. The term originally had a literal geographic meaning, Western culture was influenced by many older great civilizations of the ancient Near East, such as Phoenicia, Minoan Crete, Sumer, Babylonia, and also Ancient Egypt. It originated in the Mediterranean basin and its vicinity, Greece, over time, their associated empires grew first to the east and west to include the rest of Mediterranean and Black Sea coastal areas, conquering and absorbing. Later, they expanded to the north of the Mediterranean Sea to include Western, Central, numerous times, this expansion was accompanied by Christian missionaries, who attempted to proselytize Christianity. There is debate among some as to whether Latin America is in a category of its own, specifically, Western culture may imply, a Biblical Christian cultural influence in spiritual thinking, customs and either ethic or moral traditions, around the Post-Classical Era and after. European cultural influences concerning artistic, musical, folkloric, ethic and oral traditions, the concept of Western culture is generally linked to the classical definition of the Western world. In this definition, Western culture is the set of literary, scientific, political, artistic, much of this set of traditions and knowledge is collected in the Western canon. The term has come to apply to countries whose history is marked by European immigration or settlement, such as the Americas, and Oceania. The geopolitical divisions in Europe that created a concept of East and West originated in the Roman Empire, Roman Catholic Western and Central Europe, as such, maintained a distinct identity particularly as it began to redevelop during the Renaissance. Even following the Protestant Reformation, Protestant Europe continued to see itself as more tied to Roman Catholic Europe than other parts of the civilized world. Use of the term West as a cultural and geopolitical term developed over the course of the Age of Exploration as Europe spread its culture to other parts of the world. Additionally, closer contacts between the West and Asia and other parts of the world in recent times have continued to cloud the use, herodotus considered the Persian Wars of the early 5th century BC a conflict of Europa versus Asia. The terms West and East were not used by any Greek author to describe that conflict, the Great Schism and the Fourth Crusade confirmed this deviation. The Renaissance in the West emerged partly from currents within the Roman Empire, Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew from a city-state founded on the Italian Peninsula about the 9th century BC to a massive empire straddling the Mediterranean Sea. In its 12-century existence, Roman civilization shifted from a monarchy, to a republic, nonetheless, despite its great legacy, a number of factors led to the eventual decline of the Roman Empire

13.
Astrology and astronomy
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Astrology and astronomy were archaically treated together, and were only gradually separated in Western 17th century philosophy with the rejection of astrology. During the later part of the period, astronomy was treated as the foundation upon which astrology could operate. Since the 18th century they have come to be regarded as separate disciplines. Astronomy, the study of objects and phenomena originating beyond the Earths atmosphere, is a science and is a widely studied academic discipline, in pre-modern times, most cultures did not make a clear distinction between the two disciplines, putting them both together as one. This overlap does not mean that astrology and astronomy were always regarded as one, in ancient Greece, pre-Socratic thinkers such as Anaximander, Xenophanes, Anaximenes, and Heraclides speculated about the nature and substance of the stars and planets. Astronomers such as Eudoxus observed planetary motions and cycles, and created a geocentric cosmological model that would be accepted by Aristotle and this model generally lasted until Ptolemy, who added epicycles to explain the retrograde motion of Mars. The Platonic school promoted the study of astronomy as a part of philosophy because the motions of the heavens demonstrate an orderly, in the third century BC, Babylonian astrology began to make its presence felt in Greece. Astrology was criticized by Hellenistic philosophers such as the Academic Skeptic Carneades, however, the notions of the Great Year and eternal recurrence were Stoic doctrines that made divination and fatalism possible. In the Hellenistic world, the Greek words astrologia and astronomia were often used interchangeably, plato taught about astronomia and stipulated that planetary phenomena should be described by a geometrical model. The first solution was proposed by Eudoxus, Aristotle favored a physical approach and adopted the word astrologia. Eccentrics and epicycles came to be thought of as useful fictions, for a more general public, the distinguishing principle was not evident and either word was acceptable. For the Babylonian horoscopic practice, the words used were apotelesma and katarche. Isidore identified the two strands entangled in the discipline and called them astrologia naturalis and astrologia superstitiosa. Astrology was widely accepted in medieval Europe as astrological texts from Hellenistic and Arabic astrologers were translated into Latin, in the late Middle Ages, its acceptance or rejection often depended on its reception in the royal courts of Europe. Not until the time of Francis Bacon was astrology rejected as a part of scholastic metaphysics rather than empirical observation, because of their lengthy shared history, it sometimes happens that the two are confused with one another even today. Many contemporary astrologers, however, do not claim that astrology is a science, but think of it as a form of divination like the I-Ching, the primary goal of astronomy is to understand the physics of the universe. Astrologers use astronomical calculations for the positions of bodies along the ecliptic and attempt to correlate celestial events with earthly events. Astronomers consistently use the method, naturalistic presuppositions and abstract mathematical reasoning to investigate or explain phenomena in the universe

Astrology and astronomy
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Early science, particularly geometry and astronomy/astrology (astronomia), was connected to the divine for most medieval scholars. The compass in this 13th-century manuscript is a symbol of God's act of creation, as many believed that there was something intrinsically divine or perfect that could be found in circles.
Astrology and astronomy
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New millennium astrological chart
Astrology and astronomy
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Astrologer–astronomer Richard of Wallingford is shown measuring an equatorium with a pair of compasses in this 14th-century work.
Astrology and astronomy
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An engraving by Albrecht Dürer featuring Mashallah, from the title page of the De scientia motus orbis (Latin version with engraving, 1504). As in many medieval illustrations, the compass here is an icon of religion as well as science, in reference to God as the architect of creation.

14.
Planet
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The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, astrology, science, mythology, and religion. Several planets in the Solar System can be seen with the naked eye and these were regarded by many early cultures as divine, or as emissaries of deities. As scientific knowledge advanced, human perception of the planets changed, in 2006, the International Astronomical Union officially adopted a resolution defining planets within the Solar System. This definition is controversial because it excludes many objects of mass based on where or what they orbit. The planets were thought by Ptolemy to orbit Earth in deferent, at about the same time, by careful analysis of pre-telescopic observation data collected by Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler found the planets orbits were not circular but elliptical. As observational tools improved, astronomers saw that, like Earth, the planets rotated around tilted axes, and some shared such features as ice caps and seasons. Since the dawn of the Space Age, close observation by space probes has found that Earth and the planets share characteristics such as volcanism, hurricanes, tectonics. Planets are generally divided into two types, large low-density giant planets, and smaller rocky terrestrials. Under IAU definitions, there are eight planets in the Solar System, in order of increasing distance from the Sun, they are the four terrestrials, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, then the four giant planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Six of the planets are orbited by one or more natural satellites, several thousands of planets around other stars have been discovered in the Milky Way. e. in the habitable zone. On December 20,2011, the Kepler Space Telescope team reported the discovery of the first Earth-sized extrasolar planets, Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, orbiting a Sun-like star, Kepler-20. A2012 study, analyzing gravitational microlensing data, estimates an average of at least 1.6 bound planets for every star in the Milky Way, around one in five Sun-like stars is thought to have an Earth-sized planet in its habitable zone. The idea of planets has evolved over its history, from the lights of antiquity to the earthly objects of the scientific age. The concept has expanded to include not only in the Solar System. The ambiguities inherent in defining planets have led to much scientific controversy, the five classical planets, being visible to the naked eye, have been known since ancient times and have had a significant impact on mythology, religious cosmology, and ancient astronomy. In ancient times, astronomers noted how certain lights moved across the sky, as opposed to the fixed stars, ancient Greeks called these lights πλάνητες ἀστέρες or simply πλανῆται, from which todays word planet was derived. In ancient Greece, China, Babylon, and indeed all pre-modern civilizations, it was almost universally believed that Earth was the center of the Universe and that all the planets circled Earth. The first civilization known to have a theory of the planets were the Babylonians

Planet
Planet
Planet
Planet

15.
Culture
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Culture can be defined in numerous ways. In the words of anthropologist E. B, Tylor, it is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. The Cambridge English Dictionary states that culture is the way of life, especially the customs and beliefs. As a defining aspect of what it means to be human, culture is a concept in anthropology. The word is used in a sense as the evolved ability to categorize and represent experiences with symbols. The level of cultural sophistication has also sometimes seen to distinguish civilizations from less complex societies. Mass culture refers to the mass-produced and mass mediated forms of culture that emerged in the 20th century. When used as a count noun, a culture is the set of customs, traditions, in this sense, multiculturalism is a concept that values the peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between different cultures inhabiting the same planet. Sometimes culture is used to describe specific practices within a subgroup of a society. Samuel Pufendorf took over this metaphor in a context, meaning something similar. His use, and that of many writers after him, refers to all the ways in which human beings overcome their original barbarism, and through artifice, become fully human. To be cultural, to have a culture, is to inhabit a place sufficiently intensive to cultivate it—to be responsible for it, to respond to it, thus a contrast between culture and civilization is usually implied in these authors, even when not expressed as such. Cultural invention has come to any innovation that is new and found to be useful to a group of people and expressed in their behavior. Humanity is in a global accelerating culture change period, driven by the expansion of commerce, the mass media, and above all. Culture repositioning means the reconstruction of the concept of a society. Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change, Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models, and spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change, for example, the U. S. feminist movement involved new practices that produced a shift in gender relations, altering both gender and economic structures. Environmental conditions may also enter as factors, Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies, which may also produce—or inhibit—social shifts and changes in cultural practices

16.
Mythology
–
Mythology refers variously to the collected myths of a group of people or to the study of such myths. Myths are the people tell to explain nature, history. Myth is a feature of every culture, mythologizing continues, as shown in contemporary mythopoeia such as urban legends and the expansive fictional mythoi created by fantasy novels and comics. A cultures collective mythology helps convey belonging, shared and religious experiences, behavioral models, the study of myth began in ancient history. Rival classes of the Greek myths by Euhemerus, Plato and Sallustius were developed by the Neoplatonists, the nineteenth-century comparative mythology reinterpreted myth as a primitive and failed counterpart of science, a disease of language, or a misinterpretation of magical ritual. Recent approaches often view myths as manifestations of psychological, cultural, or societal truths, the term mythology predates the word myth by centuries. It first appeared in the fifteenth-century, borrowed from the Middle French term mythologie, the word mythology, comes from Middle French mythologie, from Late Latin mythologia, from Greek μυθολογία mythología from μῦθος mythos and -λογία -logia. The word mythología appears in Plato, but was used as a term for fiction or story-telling of any kind, combining mỹthos. From Lydgate until the seventeenth or eighteenth-century, mythology was similarly used to mean a moral, fable, from its earliest use in reference to a collection of traditional stories or beliefs, mythology implied the falsehood of the stories being described. It came to be applied by analogy with similar bodies of traditional stories among other cultures around the world. The Greek loanword mythos and Latinate mythus both appeared in English before the first example of myth in 1830, in present use, mythology usually refers to the collected myths of a group of people, but may also mean the study of such myths. For example, Greek mythology, Roman mythology and Hittite mythology all describe the body of myths retold among those cultures, dundes defined myth as a sacred narrative that explains how the world and humanity evolved into their present form. Lincoln defined myth as ideology in narrative form, scholars in other fields use the term myth in varied ways. In a broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story, due to this pejorative sense, some scholars opted for the term mythos. Its use was similarly pejorative and now commonly refers to its Aristotelian sense as a plot point or to a collective mythology. The term is distinguished from didactic literature such as fables. Main characters in myths are usually gods, demigods or supernatural humans, however, many exceptions or combinations exist, as in the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid. Myths are often endorsed by rulers and priests and are linked to religion or spirituality

17.
Spiritual being
–
The English word spirit, from Latin spiritus breath, has many different meanings and connotations, most of them relating to a non-corporeal substance contrasted with the material body. It can also refer to a subtle as opposed to gross material substance, the word spirit is often used metaphysically to refer to the consciousness or personality. e. A manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person, the term may also refer to any incorporeal or immaterial being, such as demons or deities. In the Bible, the Spirit, specifically denotes the Holy Spirit, the English word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning breath, but also spirit, soul, courage, vigor, ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European *peis. It is distinguished from Latin anima, soul, in Greek, this distinction exists between pneuma, breath, motile air, spirit, and psykhē, soul. The word spirit came into Middle English via Old French, the distinction between soul and spirit also developed in the Abrahamic religions, Arabic nafs opposite rūħ, Hebrew neshama or nephesh נֶ֫פֶשׁ‎ nép̄eš opposite ruach. In a lecture delivered to the literary Society of Augsburg, October 20,1926, on the theme of “Nature and Spirit, the mistrust of verbal concepts, inconvenient as it is, nevertheless seems to me to be very much in place in speaking of fundamentals. Spirit and Life are familiar enough words to us, very old acquaintances in fact, pawns that for thousands of years have pushed back. It can scarcely be an accident onomatopoeic words like ruach, ruch, roho mean ‘spirit’ no less clearly than the Greek πνεύμα and the Latin spiritus”. In spiritual and metaphysical terms, spirit has acquired a number of meanings, An incorporeal but ubiquitous, unlike the concept of souls a spirit develops and grows as an integral aspect of a living being. This concept of the individual spirit occurs commonly in animism, note the distinction between this concept of spirit and that of the pre-existing or eternal soul, belief in souls occurs specifically and far less commonly, particularly in traditional societies. One might more properly term this type/aspect of spirit life or aether rather than spirit, people usually conceive of a ghost as a wandering spirit from a being no longer living, having survived the death of the body yet maintaining at least vestiges of mind and consciousness. In religion and spirituality, the respiration of a human has for obvious reasons become seen as linked with the very occurrence of life. A similar significance has become attached to human blood, Spirit, in this sense, means the thing that separates a living body from a corpse—and usually implies intelligence, consciousness, and sentience. Latter-day Saint prophet Joseph Smith Jr. taught that the concept of spirit as incorporeal or without substance was incorrect, all spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes. In some Native American spiritual traditions the Great Spirit or Wakan Tanka is a term for the Supreme Being, individual spirits envisaged as interconnected with all other spirits and with The Spirit. This concept relates to theories of a unified spirituality, to universal consciousness, the experience of such a connection can become a primary basis for spiritual belief. Christian spiritual theology can use the term Spirit to describe God, or aspects of God — as in the Holy Spirit, Spirit forms a central concept in pneumatology

18.
Drought
–
A drought is a period of below-average precipitation in a given region, resulting in prolonged shortages in its water supply, whether atmospheric, surface water or ground water. A drought can last for months or years, or may be declared after as few as 15 days and it can have a substantial impact on the ecosystem and agriculture of the affected region and harm to the local economy. Annual dry seasons in the tropics significantly increase the chances of a drought developing, periods of heat can significantly worsen drought conditions by hastening evaporation of water vapour. Many plant species, such as those in the family Cactaceae, have drought tolerance adaptations like reduced leaf area, some others survive dry periods as buried seeds. Semi-permanent drought produces arid biomes such as deserts and grasslands, prolonged droughts have caused mass migrations and humanitarian crises. Most arid ecosystems have inherently low productivity, the most prolonged drought ever in the world in recorded history occurred in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Mechanisms of producing precipitation include convective, stratiform, and orographic rainfall, precipitation can be divided into three categories, based on whether it falls as liquid water, liquid water that freezes on contact with the surface, or ice. Drought are mainly course by in low rain areas, if these factors do not support precipitation volumes sufficient to reach the surface over a sufficient time, the result is a drought. Once a region is within drought, feedback mechanisms such as local arid air, hot conditions which can promote warm core ridging, within the tropics, distinct, wet and dry seasons emerge due to the movement of the Intertropical Convergence Zone or Monsoon trough. The dry season greatly increases drought occurrence, and is characterized by its low humidity, with watering holes, because of the lack of these watering holes, many grazing animals are forced to migrate due to the lack of water and feed to more fertile spots. Examples of such animals are zebras, elephants, and wildebeest, because of the lack of water in the plants, bushfires are common. Since water vapor becomes more energetic with increasing temperature, more water vapor is required to increase relative humidity values to 100% at higher temperatures, periods of warmth quicken the pace of fruit and vegetable production, increase evaporation and transpiration from plants, and worsen drought conditions. Drier and hotter weather occurs in parts of the Amazon River Basin, Colombia, winters during the El Niño are warmer and drier than average conditions in the Northwest, northern Midwest, and northern Mideast United States, so those regions experience reduced snowfalls. Conditions are also drier than normal from December to February in south-central Africa, mainly in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Botswana. Direct effects of El Niño resulting in drier conditions occur in parts of Southeast Asia and Northern Australia, increasing bush fires, worsening haze, drier-than-normal conditions are also in general observed in Queensland, inland Victoria, inland New South Wales, and eastern Tasmania from June to August. As warm water spreads from the west Pacific and the Indian Ocean to the east Pacific, it causes extensive drought in the western Pacific. Singapore experienced the driest February in 2014 since records began in 1869, with only 6.3 mm of rain falling in the month, the years 1968 and 2005 had the next driest Februaries, when 8.4 mm of rain fell. Human activity can directly trigger exacerbating factors such as farming, excessive irrigation, deforestation

19.
Season
–
A season is a division of the year marked by changes in weather, ecology and hours of daylight. Seasons result from the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. During May, June, and July, the northern hemisphere is exposed to direct sunlight because the hemisphere faces the sun. The same is true of the hemisphere in November, December. It is the tilt of the Earth that causes the Sun to be higher in the sky during the months which increases the solar flux. However, due to lag, June, July, and August are the hottest months in the northern hemisphere and December, January. In temperate and subpolar regions, four calendar-based seasons are recognized, spring, summer, autumn or fall. Ecologists often use a model for temperate climate regions, prevernal, vernal, estival, serotinal, autumnal. Many tropical regions have two seasons, the rainy, wet, or monsoon season and the dry season, some have a third cool, mild, or harmattan season. Seasons often held special significance for agrarian societies, whose lives revolved around planting and harvest times, in some parts of the world, some other seasons capture the timing of important ecological events such as hurricane season, tornado season, and wildfire season. The most historically important of these are the three seasons—flood, growth, and low water—which were previously defined by the annual flooding of the Nile in Egypt. The seasons result from the Earths axis of rotation being tilted with respect to its orbital plane by an angle of approximately 23.5 degrees, regardless of the time of year, the northern and southern hemispheres always experience opposite seasons. This is because during summer or winter, one part of the planet is directly exposed to the rays of the Sun than the other. For approximately half of the year, the northern hemisphere tips toward the Sun, for the other half of the year, the same happens, but in the southern hemisphere instead of the northern, with the maximum around December 21. The two instants when the Sun is directly overhead at the Equator are the equinoxes. Also at that moment, both the North Pole and the South Pole of the Earth are just on the terminator, and hence day and night are equally divided between the northern and southern hemispheres. Around the March equinox, the northern hemisphere will be experiencing spring as the hours of daylight increase, the effect of axial tilt is observable as the change in day length and altitude of the Sun at noon during a year. Between this effect and the daylight hours, the axial tilt of the Earth accounts for most of the seasonal variation in climate in both hemispheres

Season
–
Red and green trees in spring
Season
–
A tree in winter
Season
–
The six ecological seasons
Season
–
The four calendar seasons, depicted in an ancient Roman mosaic from Tunisia.

20.
Tide
–
Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon and the Sun and the rotation of the Earth. Some shorelines experience a semi-diurnal tide—two nearly equal high and low tides each day, other locations experience a diurnal tide—only one high and low tide each day. A mixed tide—two uneven tides a day, or one high, Tides vary on timescales ranging from hours to years due to a number of factors. To make accurate records, tide gauges at fixed stations measure water level over time, gauges ignore variations caused by waves with periods shorter than minutes. These data are compared to the level usually called mean sea level. Tidal phenomena are not limited to the oceans, but can occur in other systems whenever a gravitational field varies in time. For example, the part of the Earth is affected by tides. Tide changes proceed via the following stages, Sea level rises over several hours, covering the intertidal zone, the water rises to its highest level, reaching high tide. Sea level falls over several hours, revealing the intertidal zone, the water stops falling, reaching low tide. Oscillating currents produced by tides are known as tidal streams, the moment that the tidal current ceases is called slack water or slack tide. The tide then reverses direction and is said to be turning, slack water usually occurs near high water and low water. But there are locations where the moments of slack tide differ significantly from those of high, Tides are commonly semi-diurnal, or diurnal. The two high waters on a day are typically not the same height, these are the higher high water. Similarly, the two low waters each day are the low water and the lower low water. The daily inequality is not consistent and is small when the Moon is over the equator. From the highest level to the lowest, Highest Astronomical Tide – The highest tide which can be predicted to occur, note that meteorological conditions may add extra height to the HAT. Mean High Water Springs – The average of the two high tides on the days of spring tides, mean High Water Neaps – The average of the two high tides on the days of neap tides. Mean Sea Level – This is the sea level

Tide
–
High tide, Alma, New Brunswick in the Bay of Fundy, 1972
Tide
–
Low tide at the same fishing port in Bay of Fundy, 1972
Tide
–
In Maine (U.S.) low tide occurs roughly at moonrise and high tide with a high moon, corresponding to the simple gravity model of two tidal bulges; at most places however, moon and tides have a phase shift.
Tide
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Low tide at Bangchuidao Scenic Area, Dalian, Liaoning Province, China

21.
Priest
–
A priest or priestess, is a person authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites, in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of and their office or position is the priesthood, a term which also may apply to such persons collectively. The necessity to read sacred texts and keep temple or church records helped foster literacy in early societies. Priests exist in many religions today, such as all or some branches of Judaism, Christianity, the question of which religions have a priest depends on how the titles of leaders are used or translated into English. In some cases, leaders are more like those that other believers will often turn to for advice on spiritual matters, for example, clergy in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are priests, but in Protestant Christianity they are typically minister and pastor. The terms priest and priestess are sufficiently generic that they may be used in a sense to describe the religious mediators of an unknown or otherwise unspecified religion. In many religions, being a priest or priestess is a full-time position, many Christian priests and pastors choose or are mandated to dedicate themselves to their churches and receive their living directly from their churches. In other cases it is a part-time role, for example, in the early history of Iceland the chieftains were titled goði, a word meaning priest. In some religions, being a priest or priestess is by election or human choice. In Judaism the priesthood is inherited in familial lines, in a theocracy, a society is governed by its priesthood. The word priest, is derived from Greek, via Latin presbyter. Old High German also has the disyllabic priester, priestar, apparently derived from Latin independently via Old French presbtre, the Latin presbyter ultimately represents Greek presbyteros, the regular Latin word for priest being sacerdos, corresponding to Greek hiereus. That English should have only the term priest to translate presbyter. The feminine English noun, priestess, was coined in the 17th century, in the 20th century, the word was used in controversies surrounding the ordination of women. In the case of the ordination of women in the Anglican communion, it is common to speak of priests. In historical polytheism, a priest administers the sacrifice to a deity, in the Ancient Near East, the priesthood also acted on behalf of the deities in managing their property. Priestesses in antiquity often performed sacred prostitution, and in Ancient Greece, some such as Pythia, priestess at Delphi. Sumerian and Akkadian Entu or EN were top-ranking priestesses who were distinguished with special ceremonial attire and they owned property, transacted business, and initiated the hieros gamos ceremony with priests and kings

22.
Astronomical object
–
An astronomical object or celestial object is a naturally occurring physical entity, association, or structure that current astronomy has demonstrated to exist in the observable universe. In astronomy, the object and body are often used interchangeably. Examples for astronomical objects include planetary systems, star clusters, nebulae and galaxies, while asteroids, moons, planets, and stars are astronomical bodies. A comet may be identified as both body and object, It is a body when referring to the nucleus of ice and dust. The universe can be viewed as having a hierarchical structure, at the largest scales, the fundamental component of assembly is the galaxy. Galaxies are organized groups and clusters, often within larger superclusters. Disc galaxies encompass lenticular and spiral galaxies with features, such as spiral arms, at the core, most galaxies have a supermassive black hole, which may result in an active galactic nucleus. Galaxies can also have satellites in the form of dwarf galaxies, the constituents of a galaxy are formed out of gaseous matter that assembles through gravitational self-attraction in a hierarchical manner. At this level, the fundamental components are the stars. The great variety of forms are determined almost entirely by the mass, composition. Stars may be found in systems that orbit about each other in a hierarchical organization. A planetary system and various objects such as asteroids, comets and debris. The various distinctive types of stars are shown by the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram —a plot of stellar luminosity versus surface temperature. Each star follows a track across this diagram. If this track takes the star through a region containing a variable type. An example of this is the instability strip, a region of the H-R diagram that includes Delta Scuti, RR Lyrae, the table below lists the general categories of bodies and objects by their location or structure. International Astronomical Naming Commission List of light sources List of Solar System objects Lists of astronomical objects SkyChart, Sky & Telescope Monthly skymaps for every location on Earth

23.
Divinity
–
Such things are regarded as divine due to their transcendental origins or because their attributes or qualities are superior or supreme relative to things of the Earth. Divine things are regarded as eternal and based in truth, while things are regarded as ephemeral. Such things that may qualify as divine are apparitions, visions, prophecies, miracles, and in some also the soul, or more general things like resurrection, immortality, grace. Otherwise what is or is not divine may be loosely defined, the root of the word divine is literally godly, but the use varies significantly depending on which deity is being discussed. This article outlines the major distinctions in the use of the terms. For specific related academic terms, see Divinity, or Divine, for instance, Jehovah is closely associated with storms and thunder throughout much of the Old Testament. He is said to speak in thunder, and thunder is seen as a token of his anger and this power was then extended to prophets like Moses and Samuel, who caused thunderous storms to rain down on their enemies. Divinity always carries connotations of goodness, beauty, beneficence, justice, pantheistic and polytheistic faiths make no such distinction, gods and other beings of transcendent power often have complex, ignoble, or even irrational motivations for their acts. Note that while the demon and demonic are used in monotheistic faiths as antonyms to divine, they are in fact derived from the Greek word daimón. There are three distinct usages of divinity and divine in religious discourse, In monotheistic faiths, the divinity is often used to refer to the singular God central to that faith. Often the word takes the article and is capitalized — the Divinity — as though it were a proper name or definitive honorific. Divine — capitalized — may be used as an adjective to refer to the manifestations of such a Divinity or its powers and this leads to the second usage of the word divine, to refer to the operation of transcendent power in the world. In its most direct form, the operation of transcendent power implies some form of divine intervention, for pan- and polytheistic faiths this usually implies the direct action of one god or another on the course of human events. In monotheistic religions, divine intervention may take very direct forms, miracles, visions, transcendent force or power may also operate through more subtle and indirect paths. Monotheistic faiths generally support some version of divine providence, which acknowledges that the divinity of the faith has a profound but unknowable plan always unfolding in the world. Unforeseeable, overwhelming, or seemingly unjust events are often thrown on the will of the Divine, in deferences like the Muslim inshallah, in the third usage, extensions of divinity and divine power are credited to living, mortal individuals. More commonly, and more pertinent to recent history, leaders merely claim some form of divine mandate, in Greek mythology, Achilles mother bathed him in the river Styx to give him immortality, and Hercules — as the son of Zeus — inherited near-godly powers. In religious Taoism, Lao Tsu is venerated as a saint with his own powers, various individuals in the Buddhist faith, beginning with Siddhartha, are considered to be enlightened, and in religious forms of Buddhism they are credited with divine powers

24.
Stonehenge
–
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England,2 miles west of Amesbury and 8 miles north of Salisbury. Stonehenges ring of standing stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the most dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, archaeologists believe it was constructed from 3000 BC to 2000 BC. The surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC. Radiocarbon dating suggests that the first bluestones were raised between 2400 and 2200 BC, although they may have been at the site as early as 3000 BC, one of the most famous landmarks in the UK, Stonehenge is regarded as a British cultural icon. It has been a legally protected Scheduled Ancient Monument since 1882 when legislation to protect historic monuments was first successfully introduced in Britain, the site and its surroundings were added to UNESCOs list of World Heritage Sites in 1986. Stonehenge is owned by the Crown and managed by English Heritage, Stonehenge could have been a burial ground from its earliest beginnings. Deposits containing human bone date from as early as 3000 BC, when the ditch and bank were first dug, William Stukeley in 1740 notes, Pendulous rocks are now called henges in Yorkshire. I doubt not, Stonehenge in Saxon signifies the hanging stones. Like Stonehenges trilithons, medieval gallows consisted of two uprights with a lintel joining them, rather than the inverted L-shape more familiar today, the henge portion has given its name to a class of monuments known as henges. Archaeologists define henges as earthworks consisting of a banked enclosure with an internal ditch. As often happens in archaeological terminology, this is a holdover from antiquarian use, Stonehenge evolved in several construction phases spanning at least 1500 years. There is evidence of construction on and around the monument that perhaps extends the landscapes time frame to 6500 years. The modern phasing most generally agreed to by archaeologists is detailed below, features mentioned in the text are numbered and shown on the plan, right. Archaeologists have found four, or possibly five, large Mesolithic postholes and these held pine posts around 0.75 metres in diameter, which were erected and eventually rotted in situ. Three of the posts were in an east-west alignment which may have had significance, no parallels are known from Britain at the time. A settlement that may have been contemporaneous with the posts has been found at Blick Mead, a reliable year round spring 1 mile from Stonehenge. Salisbury Plain was then still wooded but 4,000 years later, during the earlier Neolithic, people built an enclosure at Robin Hoods Ball. In approximately 3500 BC, a Stonehenge Cursus was built 700 metres north of the site as the first farmers began to clear the trees, a number of other adjacent stone and wooden structures and burial mounds, previously overlooked, may date as far back as 4000 BC. Charcoal from the ‘Blick Mead’ camp 2.4 kilometres from Stonehenge has been dated to 4000 BC and it stood in open grassland on a slightly sloping spot

Stonehenge
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Stonehenge in August 2014
Stonehenge
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Plan of Stonehenge in 2004. After Cleal et al. and Pitts. Italicised numbers in the text refer to the labels on this plan. Trilithon lintels omitted for clarity. Holes that no longer, or never, contained stones are shown as open circles. Stones visible today are shown coloured
Stonehenge
–
Stonehenge 1. After Cleal et al.

25.
Social function
–
Structural functionalism, or simply functionalism, is a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. This approach looks at society through an orientation, which is a broad focus on the social structures that shape society as a whole. This approach looks at both social structure and social functions, Functionalism addresses society as a whole in terms of the function of its constituent elements, namely norms, customs, traditions, and institutions. A common analogy, popularized by Herbert Spencer, presents these parts of society as organs that work toward the proper functioning of the body as a whole. For Talcott Parsons, structural-functionalism came to describe a stage in the methodological development of social science. Biology has been taken to provide a guide to conceptualizing the structure, Functionalism strongly emphasises the pre-eminence of the social world over its individual parts. Functionalism also has a basis in the work of theorists such as Marcel Mauss, Bronisław Malinowski. It is in Radcliffe-Browns specific usage that the prefix structural emerged, Radcliffe-Brown proposed that most stateless, primitive societies, lacking strong centralized institutions, are based on an association of corporate-descent groups. Structural functionalism also took on Malinowskis argument that the building block of society is the nuclear family. Émile Durkheim was concerned with the question of how certain societies maintain internal stability and he proposed that such societies tend to be segmented, with equivalent parts held together by shared values, common symbols or, as his nephew Marcel Mauss held, systems of exchanges. Durkheim used the mechanical solidarity to refer to these types of social bonds, based on common sentiments & shared moral values. In modern, complex societies, members perform very different tasks and these views were upheld by Durkheim, who, following Comte, believed that society constitutes a separate level of reality, distinct from both biological and inorganic matter. Explanations of social phenomena had therefore to be constructed within this level, the central concern of structural functionalism is a continuation of the Durkheimian task of explaining the apparent stability and internal cohesion needed by societies to endure over time. All social and cultural phenomena are seen as functional in the sense of working together. They are primarily analyzed in terms of this function, the individual is significant not in and of himself, but rather in terms of his status, his position in patterns of social relations, and the behaviours associated with his status. Therefore, the structure is the network of statuses connected by associated roles. It is simplistic to equate the perspective directly with political conservatism, the tendency to emphasize cohesive systems, however, leads functionalist theories to be contrasted with conflict theories which instead emphasize social problems and inequalities. Auguste Comte, the Father of Positivism, pointed out the need to keep society unified as many traditions were diminishing and he was the first person to coin the term sociology

26.
Calendar
–
A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, a date is the designation of a single, specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a record of such a system. A calendar can also mean a list of planned events, such as a calendar or a partly or fully chronological list of documents. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not necessarily, synchronized with the cycle of the sun or the moon. The most common type of calendar was the lunisolar calendar. Latin calendarium meant account book, register, the Latin term was adopted in Old French as calendier and from there in Middle English as calender by the 13th century. The course of the Sun and the Moon are the most evident forms of timekeeping, nevertheless, the Roman calendar contained very ancient remnants of a pre-Etruscan 10-month solar year. The first recorded calendars date to the Bronze Age, dependent on the development of writing in the Ancient Near East, a larger number of calendar systems of the Ancient Near East becomes accessible in the Iron Age, based on the Babylonian calendar. This includes the calendar of the Persian Empire, which in turn gave rise to the Zoroastrian calendar as well as the Hebrew calendar, calendars in antiquity were lunisolar, depending on the introduction of intercalary months to align the solar and the lunar years. This was mostly based on observation, but there may have been attempts to model the pattern of intercalation algorithmically. The Roman calendar was reformed by Julius Caesar in 45 BC, the Julian calendar was no longer dependent on the observation of the new moon but simply followed an algorithm of introducing a leap day every four years. This created a dissociation of the month from the lunation. The Islamic calendar is based on the prohibition of intercalation by Muhammad and this resulted in an observationally based lunar calendar that shifts relative to the seasons of the solar year. The first calendar reform of the modern era was the Gregorian calendar. Such ideas are mooted from time to time but have failed to gain traction because of the loss of continuity, massive upheaval in implementation, a full calendar system has a different calendar date for every day. Thus the week cycle is by not a full calendar system. The simplest calendar system just counts time periods from a reference date and this applies for the Julian day or Unix Time

Calendar
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Sun and Moon, Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493
Calendar
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Calendar of the Qahal, 5591 (1831)
Calendar
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A Hindu almanac (pancanga) for the year 1871/2 from Rajasthan (Library of Congress, Asian Division)
Calendar
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The Payment of the Tithes (The tax-collector), also known as Village Lawyer. Signed .P.BREVGHEL

27.
Day
–
In common usage, it is either an interval equal to 24 hours or daytime, the consecutive period of time during which the Sun is above the horizon. The period of time during which the Earth completes one rotation with respect to the Sun is called a solar day, several definitions of this universal human concept are used according to context, need and convenience. In 1960, the second was redefined in terms of the motion of the Earth. The unit of measurement day, redefined in 1960 as 86400 SI seconds and symbolized d, is not an SI unit, but is accepted for use with SI. The word day may also refer to a day of the week or to a date, as in answer to the question. The life patterns of humans and many species are related to Earths solar day. In recent decades the average length of a day on Earth has been about 86400.002 seconds. A day, understood as the span of time it takes for the Earth to make one rotation with respect to the celestial background or a distant star, is called a stellar day. This period of rotation is about 4 minutes less than 24 hours, mainly due to tidal effects, the Earths rotational period is not constant, resulting in further minor variations for both solar days and stellar days. Other planets and moons have stellar and solar days of different lengths to Earths, besides the day of 24 hours, the word day is used for several different spans of time based on the rotation of the Earth around its axis. An important one is the day, defined as the time it takes for the Sun to return to its culmination point. Because the Earth orbits the Sun elliptically as the Earth spins on an inclined axis, on average over the year this day is equivalent to 24 hours. A day, in the sense of daytime that is distinguished from night-time, is defined as the period during which sunlight directly reaches the ground. The length of daytime averages slightly more than half of the 24-hour day, two effects make daytime on average longer than nights. The Sun is not a point, but has an apparent size of about 32 minutes of arc, additionally, the atmosphere refracts sunlight in such a way that some of it reaches the ground even when the Sun is below the horizon by about 34 minutes of arc. So the first light reaches the ground when the centre of the Sun is still below the horizon by about 50 minutes of arc, the difference in time depends on the angle at which the Sun rises and sets, but can amount to around seven minutes. Ancient custom has a new day start at either the rising or setting of the Sun on the local horizon, the exact moment of, and the interval between, two sunrises or sunsets depends on the geographical position, and the time of year. A more constant day can be defined by the Sun passing through the local meridian, the exact moment is dependent on the geographical longitude, and to a lesser extent on the time of the year

28.
Month
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A month is a unit of time, used with calendars, which is approximately as long as a natural period related to the motion of the Moon, month and Moon are cognates. The traditional concept arose with the cycle of phases, such months are synodic months. From excavated tally sticks, researchers have deduced that people counted days in relation to the Moons phases as early as the Paleolithic age. Synodic months, based on the Moons orbital period with respect to the Earth-Sun line, are still the basis of many calendars today, the following types of months are mainly of significance in astronomy, most of them first recognized in Babylonian lunar astronomy. The sidereal month is defined as the Moons orbital period in a frame of reference. The exact duration of the period cannot be easily determined. However, it is equal to the time it takes the Moon to pass twice a fixed star. A synodic month is the most familiar lunar cycle, defined as the interval between two consecutive occurrences of a particular phase as seen by an observer on Earth. The mean length of the month is 29.53059 days. Due to the eccentricity of the orbit around Earth, the length of a synodic month can vary by up to seven hours. The tropical month is the time for the Moon to pass twice through the same equinox point of the sky. It is 27.32158 days, very slightly shorter than the sidereal month days, unlike the sidereal month, it can be measured precisely. An anomalistic month is the time the Moon takes to go from perigee to perigee - the point in the Moons orbit when it is closest to Earth. An anomalistic month is about 27.55455 days on average and its duration is about 27.21222 days on average. A synodic month is longer than a month because the Earth-Moon system is orbiting the Sun in the same direction as the Moon is orbiting the Earth. The Sun moves eastward with respect to the stars and it takes about 2.2 days longer for the Moon to return to the apparent position with respect to the Sun. An anomalistic month is longer than a month because the perigee moves in the same direction as the Moon is orbiting the Earth. Therefore, the Moon takes a longer to return to perigee than to return to the same star

Month
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Key concepts
Month
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On top of the knuckles (yellow): 31 days Between the knuckles (blue): 30 days February (red) has 28 or 29 days.
Month
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Physical lunar features

29.
Year
–
A year is the orbital period of the Earth moving in its orbit around the Sun. Due to the Earths axial tilt, the course of a year sees the passing of the seasons, marked by changes in weather, the hours of daylight, and, consequently, vegetation and soil fertility. In temperate and subpolar regions around the globe, four seasons are recognized, spring, summer, autumn. In tropical and subtropical regions several geographical sectors do not present defined seasons, but in the seasonal tropics, a calendar year is an approximation of the number of days of the Earths orbital period as counted in a given calendar. The Gregorian, or modern, calendar, presents its calendar year to be either a common year of 365 days or a year of 366 days, as do the Julian calendars. For the Gregorian calendar the average length of the year across the complete leap cycle of 400 years is 365.2425 days. The ISO standard ISO 80000-3, Annex C, supports the symbol a to represent a year of either 365 or 366 days, in English, the abbreviations y and yr are commonly used. In astronomy, the Julian year is a unit of time, it is defined as 365.25 days of exactly 86400 seconds, totalling exactly 31557600 seconds in the Julian astronomical year. The word year is used for periods loosely associated with, but not identical to, the calendar or astronomical year, such as the seasonal year, the fiscal year. Similarly, year can mean the period of any planet, for example. The term can also be used in reference to any long period or cycle, west Saxon ġēar, Anglian ġēr continues Proto-Germanic *jǣran. Cognates are German Jahr, Old High German jār, Old Norse ár and Gothic jer, all the descendants of the Proto-Indo-European noun *yeh₁rom year, season. Cognates also descended from the same Proto-Indo-European noun are Avestan yārǝ year, Greek ὥρα year, season, period of time, Old Church Slavonic jarŭ, Latin annus is from a PIE noun *h₂et-no-, which also yielded Gothic aþn year. Both *yeh₁-ro- and *h₂et-no- are based on verbal roots expressing movement, *h₁ey- and *h₂et- respectively, the Greek word for year, ἔτος, is cognate with Latin vetus old, from the PIE word *wetos- year, also preserved in this meaning in Sanskrit vat-sa- yearling and vat-sa-ras year. Derived from Latin annus are a number of English words, such as annual, annuity, anniversary, etc. per annum means each year, anno Domini means in the year of the Lord. No astronomical year has an number of days or lunar months. Financial and scientific calculations often use a 365-day calendar to simplify daily rates, in the Julian calendar, the average length of a year is 365.25 days. In a non-leap year, there are 365 days, in a year there are 366 days

Year
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Key concepts

30.
Agriculture
–
Agriculture is the cultivation and breeding of animals, plants and fungi for food, fiber, biofuel, medicinal plants and other products used to sustain and enhance human life. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of human civilization. The study of agriculture is known as agricultural science, the history of agriculture dates back thousands of years, and its development has been driven and defined by greatly different climates, cultures, and technologies. Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture farming has become the dominant agricultural methodology, genetically modified organisms are an increasing component of agriculture, although they are banned in several countries. Agricultural food production and water management are increasingly becoming global issues that are fostering debate on a number of fronts, the major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, fuels, and raw materials. Specific foods include cereals, vegetables, fruits, oils, meats, fibers include cotton, wool, hemp, silk and flax. Raw materials include lumber and bamboo, other useful materials are also produced by plants, such as resins, dyes, drugs, perfumes, biofuels and ornamental products such as cut flowers and nursery plants. The word agriculture is a late Middle English adaptation of Latin agricultūra, from ager, field, Agriculture usually refers to human activities, although it is also observed in certain species of ant, termite and ambrosia beetle. To practice agriculture means to use resources to produce commodities which maintain life, including food, fiber, forest products, horticultural crops. This definition includes arable farming or agronomy, and horticulture, all terms for the growing of plants, even then, it is acknowledged that there is a large amount of knowledge transfer and overlap between silviculture and agriculture. In traditional farming, the two are often combined even on small landholdings, leading to the term agroforestry, Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa. At least 11 separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin, wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 105,000 years ago. Pigs were domesticated in Mesopotamia around 15,000 years ago, rice was domesticated in China between 13,500 and 8,200 years ago, followed by mung, soy and azuki beans. Sheep were domesticated in Mesopotamia between 13,000 and 11,000 years ago. From around 11,500 years ago, the eight Neolithic founder crops, emmer and einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax were cultivated in the Levant. Cattle were domesticated from the aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey. In the Andes of South America, the potato was domesticated between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, along with beans, coca, llamas, alpacas, sugarcane and some root vegetables were domesticated in New Guinea around 9,000 years ago. Sorghum was domesticated in the Sahel region of Africa by 7,000 years ago, cotton was domesticated in Peru by 5,600 years ago, and was independently domesticated in Eurasia at an unknown time

31.
Gregorian calendar
–
The Gregorian calendar is internationally the most widely used civil calendar. It is named after Pope Gregory XIII, who introduced it in October 1582, the calendar was a refinement to the Julian calendar involving a 0. 002% correction in the length of the year. The motivation for the reform was to stop the drift of the calendar with respect to the equinoxes and solstices—particularly the northern vernal equinox, transition to the Gregorian calendar would restore the holiday to the time of the year in which it was celebrated when introduced by the early Church. The reform was adopted initially by the Catholic countries of Europe, the last European country to adopt the reform was Greece, in 1923. Many countries that have used the Islamic and other religious calendars have come to adopt this calendar for civil purposes. The reform was a modification of a made by Aloysius Lilius. His proposal included reducing the number of years in four centuries from 100 to 97. Lilius also produced an original and practical scheme for adjusting the epacts of the moon when calculating the date of Easter. For example, the years 1700,1800, and 1900 are not leap years, but the years 1600 and 2000 are. The canonical Easter tables were devised at the end of the third century, when the vernal equinox fell either on 20 March or 21 March depending on the years position in the leap year cycle. As the rule was that the full moon preceding Easter was not to precede the equinox, the date was fixed at 21 March for computational purposes, the Gregorian calendar reproduced these conditions by removing ten days. To unambiguously specify a date, dual dating or Old Style, dual dating gives two consecutive years for a given date, because of differences in the starting date of the year, and/or to give both the Julian and the Gregorian dates. The Gregorian calendar continued to use the calendar era, which counts years from the traditional date of the nativity. This year-numbering system, also known as Dionysian era or Common Era, is the predominant international standard today, the Gregorian calendar is a solar calendar. A regular Gregorian year consists of 365 days, but as in the Julian calendar, in a leap year, in the Julian calendar a leap year occurs every 4 years, but the Gregorian calendar omits 3 leap days every 400 years. In the Julian calendar, this day was inserted by doubling 24 February. In the modern period, it has become customary to number the days from the beginning of the month, some churches, notably the Roman Catholic Church, delay February festivals after the 23rd by one day in leap years. Gregorian years are identified by consecutive year numbers, the cycles repeat completely every 146,097 days, which equals 400 years

32.
Roman calendar
–
The Roman calendar is the calendar used by the Roman kingdom and republic. The original calendar consisted of 10 months beginning in spring with March and these months ran for 38 nundinal cycles, each forming a kind of eight day week ended by religious rituals and a public market. The winter period was used to create January and February. The legendary early kings Romulus and Numa were traditionally credited with establishing this early fixed calendar, in particular, the kalends, nones, and ides seem to have derived from the first sighting of the crescent moon, the first-quarter moon, and the full moon respectively. The system ran well short of the year, and it needed constant intercalation to keep religious festivals. For superstitious reasons, such intercalation occurred within the month of February even after it was no longer considered the last month. Having won his war with Pompey, Caesar used his position as Romes chief pontiff to enact a calendar reform in 46 BC, in order to bring the calendar back to its proper place, Augustus was obliged to suspend intercalation for a few decades. The original Roman calendar is believed to have been a lunar calendar whose months began from the first signs of a new crescent moon. Because a lunar cycle is about 29½ days long, such months would have varied between 29 and 30 days, Romes 8-day week, the nundinal cycle, was shared with the Etruscans, who used it as the schedule of royal audiences. It was presumably a feature of the calendar and was credited in Roman legend variously to Romulus and Servius Tullius. The Romans themselves described their first organized year as one with ten fixed months, such a decimal division fit general Roman practice. The four 31-day months were called full and the others hollow and its 304 days made up exactly 38 nundinal cycles. Later Roman writers credited this calendar to Romulus, their legendary first king and culture hero, although this was common with other practices and traditions whose origin had been lost to them. Rüpke also finds the coincidence of the length of the supposed Romulan year with the length of the first ten months of the Julian calendar to be suspicious, other traditions existed alongside this one, however. Plutarchs Parallel Lives recounts that Romuluss calendar had been solar but adhered to the principle that the year should last for 360 days. Months were employed secondarily and haphazardly, with some counted as 20 days, the attested calendar of the Roman Republic was quite different. It followed Greek calendars in assuming a lunar cycle of 29½ days and a year of 12½ synodic months. The additional two months of the year were January and February, the month was sometimes known as Mercedonius

Roman calendar
–
A fragment of the Fasti Praenestini for the month of April (Aprilis), showing the nundinal letters on the left edge
Roman calendar
–
Drawing of the fragmentary Fasti Antiates Maiores (ca. 60 BC), a Roman calendar from before the Julian reform, with the seventh and eighth months still named Quintilis ("QVI") and Sextilis ("SEX"), and the intercalary month ("INTER") in the far righthand column (see enlarged)
Roman calendar
–
Fragment of an imperial-age consular fasti, Museo Epigrafico, Rome

33.
Lunar calendar
–
A lunar calendar is a calendar based upon cycles of the Moons phases, in contrast to solar calendars based solely upon the solar year. A purely lunar calendar is also distinguished from lunisolar calendars whose lunar months are brought into alignment with the year through some process of intercalation. The details of when months begin varies from calendar to calendar, with using new, full, or crescent moons. Because each lunation is a less than 29 days,12 hours,44 minutes. Such holidays include Ramadan, the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Mongolian New Year, the Nepali New Year, the Mid-Autumn Festival and Chuseok, Loi Krathong, and Diwali. The earliest known lunar calendar was found at Warren Field in Scotland and has dated to c. 8000 BC. Some scholars argue for lunar calendars still further back—Rappenglück in the marks on a c. 17, 000-year-old cave painting at Lascaux and Marshack in the marks on a c. 27, most calendars referred to as lunar calendars are in fact lunisolar calendars. Their months are based on observations of the cycle, with intercalation being used to bring them into general agreement with the solar year. The solar civic calendar of ancient Egypt showed traces of its origin in the lunar calendar. Present-day lunisolar calendars include the Chinese, Hindu, and Thai calendars, synodic months are 29 or 30 days in length, making a lunar year of 12 months about 11 days shorter than a solar year. Some lunar calendars do not use intercalation, such as most Islamic calendars, for those that do, such as the Hebrew calendar, the most common form of intercalation is to add an additional month every second or third year. Some lunisolar calendars are also calibrated by annual natural events which are affected by lunar cycles as well as the solar cycle, an example of this is the lunar calendar of the Banks Islands, which includes three months in which the edible palolo worm mass on the beaches. These events occur at the last quarter of the lunar month, lunar and lunisolar calendars differ as to which day is the first day of the month. In some lunisolar calendars, such as the Chinese calendar, the first day of a month is the day when a new moon occurs in a particular time zone. In others, such as some Hindu calendars, each month begins on the day after the moon or the new moon. Others were based in the past on the first sighting of a lunar crescent, the length of each lunar cycle varies slightly from the average value. In addition, observations are subject to uncertainty and weather conditions, thus to avoid uncertainty about the calendar, there have been attempts to create fixed arithmetical rules to determine the start of each calendar month. The average length of the month is 29.530589 days

Lunar calendar
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Physical lunar features

34.
Julius Caesar
–
Gaius Julius Caesar, known as Julius Caesar, was a Roman politician, general, and notable author of Latin prose. He played a role in the events that led to the demise of the Roman Republic. In 60 BC, Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey formed an alliance that dominated Roman politics for several years. Their attempts to power as Populares were opposed by the Optimates within the Roman Senate. Caesars victories in the Gallic Wars, completed by 51 BC, extended Romes territory to the English Channel, Caesar became the first Roman general to cross both the Channel and the Rhine, when he built a bridge across the Rhine and crossed the Channel to invade Britain. These achievements granted him unmatched military power and threatened to eclipse the standing of Pompey, with the Gallic Wars concluded, the Senate ordered Caesar to step down from his military command and return to Rome. Caesar refused the order, and instead marked his defiance in 49 BC by crossing the Rubicon with the 13th Legion, leaving his province, Civil war resulted, and Caesars victory in the war put him in an unrivalled position of power and influence. After assuming control of government, Caesar began a programme of social and governmental reforms and he centralised the bureaucracy of the Republic and was eventually proclaimed dictator in perpetuity, giving him additional authority. But the underlying political conflicts had not been resolved, and on the Ides of March 44 BC, a new series of civil wars broke out, and the constitutional government of the Republic was never fully restored. Caesars adopted heir Octavian, later known as Augustus, rose to power after defeating his opponents in the civil war. Octavian set about solidifying his power, and the era of the Roman Empire began, much of Caesars life is known from his own accounts of his military campaigns, and from other contemporary sources, mainly the letters and speeches of Cicero and the historical writings of Sallust. The later biographies of Caesar by Suetonius and Plutarch are also major sources, Caesar is considered by many historians to be one of the greatest military commanders in history. Caesar was born into a family, the gens Julia. The cognomen Caesar originated, according to Pliny the Elder, with an ancestor who was born by Caesarean section. The Historia Augusta suggests three alternative explanations, that the first Caesar had a head of hair, that he had bright grey eyes. Caesar issued coins featuring images of elephants, suggesting that he favored this interpretation of his name, despite their ancient pedigree, the Julii Caesares were not especially politically influential, although they had enjoyed some revival of their political fortunes in the early 1st century BC. Caesars father, also called Gaius Julius Caesar, governed the province of Asia and his mother, Aurelia Cotta, came from an influential family. Little is recorded of Caesars childhood, in 85 BC, Caesars father died suddenly, so Caesar was the head of the family at 16

35.
Calendar reform
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Calendar reform, properly calendrical reform, is any significant revision of a calendar system. The term sometimes is used instead for a proposal to switch to a different calendar, most calendars have several rules which could be altered by reform, Whether and how days are grouped into subdivisions such as months and weeks, and days outside those subdivisions, if any. Which years are leap years and common years and how they differ, numbering of years, selection of the epoch, and the issue of year zero. If a week is retained, the start, length, if months are retained, number, lengths, and names of months, Special days and periods. Historically, most calendar reforms have made in order to synchronize the calendar with the astronomical year and/or the synodic month in lunar or lunisolar calendars. Most reforms for calendars have been to them more accurate. This has happened to various lunar and lunisolar calendars, and also the Julian calendar when it was altered to the Gregorian calendar, such remainders could accumulate from one period to the next, thereby driving the cycles out of synch. A typical solution to force synchronization is intercalation and this means occasionally adding an extra day into the cycle. An alternative approach is to ignore the mismatch and simply let the cycles continue to drift apart. The general approaches include, The lunar calendar, which fits days into the cycle of months, adding an extra day when needed. The solar calendar, which fits artificial months into the year, adding a day into one month when needed. The lunisolar calendar, which both the lunar and solar cycles, adding an extra month into the year when needed. An obvious disadvantage of the method of inserting a whole extra month is the large irregularity of the length of the year from one to the next. The simplicity of a calendar has always been outweighed by its inability to track the seasons. Identifying the lunar cycle month requires straightforward observation of the Moon on a clear night, however, identifying seasonal cycles requires much more methodical observation of stars or a device to track solar day-to-day progression, such as that established at places like Stonehenge. After centuries of empirical observations, the aspects of calendar construction could become more refined. The same applies to the Buddhist calendar, the first millennium reform of the Hebrew calendar changed it from an observational calendar into a calculated calendar. The Islamic calendar was a reform of the lunisolar calendar which completely divorced it from the solar year

36.
BCE
–
Common Era or Current Era is a year-numbering system for the Julian and Gregorian calendars that refers to the years since the start of this era, i. e. since AD1. The preceding era is referred to as before the Common or Current Era, the Current Era notation system can be used as a secular alternative to the Dionysian era system, which distinguishes eras as AD and BC. The two notation systems are equivalent, thus 2017 CE corresponds to AD2017 and 400 BCE corresponds to 400 BC. The year-numbering system for the Gregorian calendar is the most widespread civil calendar used in the world today. For decades, it has been the standard, recognized by international institutions such as the United Nations. The expression has been traced back to Latin usage to 1615, as vulgaris aerae, the term Common Era can be found in English as early as 1708, and became more widely used in the mid-19th century by Jewish academics. He attempted to number years from a reference date, an event he referred to as the Incarnation of Jesus. Dionysius labeled the column of the table in which he introduced the new era as Anni Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, numbering years in this manner became more widespread in Europe with its usage by Bede in England in 731. Bede also introduced the practice of dating years before what he supposed was the year of birth of Jesus, in 1422, Portugal became the last Western European country to switch to the system begun by Dionysius. The first use of the Latin term vulgaris aerae discovered so far was in a 1615 book by Johannes Kepler, Kepler uses it again in a 1616 table of ephemerides, and again in 1617. A1635 English edition of that book has the title page in English – so far, a 1701 book edited by John LeClerc includes Before Christ according to the Vulgar Æra,6. A1716 book in English by Dean Humphrey Prideaux says, before the beginning of the vulgar æra, a 1796 book uses the term vulgar era of the nativity. The first so-far-discovered usage of Christian Era is as the Latin phrase aerae christianae on the page of a 1584 theology book. In 1649, the Latin phrase æræ Christianæ appeared in the title of an English almanac, a 1652 ephemeris is the first instance so-far-found for English usage of Christian Era. The English phrase common Era appears at least as early as 1708, a 1759 history book uses common æra in a generic sense, to refer to the common era of the Jews. The first-so-far found usage of the phrase before the era is in a 1770 work that also uses common era and vulgar era as synonyms. The 1797 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica uses the terms vulgar era, the Catholic Encyclopedia in at least one article reports all three terms being commonly understood by the early 20th century. Thus, the era of the Jews, the common era of the Mahometans, common era of the world

BCE
–
Key concepts

37.
Julian calendar
–
The Julian calendar, proposed by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, was a reform of the Roman calendar. It took effect on 1 January 45 BC, by edict, the Julian calendar gains against the mean tropical year at the rate of one day in 128 years. For the Gregorian the figure is one day in 3,030 years, the difference in the average length of the year between Julian and Gregorian is 0. 002%. The Julian calendar has a year of 365 days divided into 12 months. A leap day is added to February every four years, the Julian year is, therefore, on average 365.25 days long. It was intended to approximate the tropical year, as a result, the calendar year gains about three days every four centuries compared to observed equinox times and the seasons. This discrepancy was corrected by the Gregorian reform of 1582, consequently, the Julian calendar is currently 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar. Egypt converted on 20 December 1874/1 January 1875, turkey switched on 16 February/1 March 1917. Russia changed on 1/14 February 1918, Greece made the change for civil purposes on 16 February/1 March 1923 - the national day, which was a religious holiday, was to remain on the old calendar. Most Christian denominations in the west and areas evangelised by western churches have replaced the Julian calendar with the Gregorian as the basis for their liturgical calendars. However, most branches of the Eastern Orthodox Church still use the Julian calendar for calculating the date of Easter, some Orthodox churches have adopted the Revised Julian calendar for the observance of fixed feasts, while other Orthodox churches retain the Julian calendar for all purposes. The Julian calendar is used by the Berbers of the Maghreb in the form of the Berber calendar. In the form of the Alexandrian calendar, it is the basis for the Ethiopian calendar, during the changeover between calendars and for some time afterwards, dual dating was used in documents and gave the date according to both systems. In contemporary as well as texts that describe events during the period of change. The ordinary year in the previous Roman calendar consisted of 12 months, in addition, a 27- or 28-day intercalary month, the Mensis Intercalaris, was sometimes inserted between February and March. The net effect was to add 22 or 23 days to the year, some say the mensis intercalaris always had 27 days and began on either the first or the second day after the Terminalia. According to the later writers Censorinus and Macrobius, the ideal intercalary cycle consisted of ordinary years of 355 days alternating with intercalary years, alternately 377 and 378 days long. In this system, the average Roman year would have had 366 1⁄4 days over four years, Macrobius describes a further refinement whereby, in one 8-year period within a 24-year cycle, there were only three intercalary years, each of 377 days

38.
Leap year
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A leap year is a calendar year containing one additional day added to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year. By inserting an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected, a year that is not a leap year is called a common year. For example, in the Gregorian calendar, each year has 366 days instead of the usual 365. In the Bahai Calendar, a day is added when needed to ensure that the following year begins on the vernal equinox. For example, Christmas Day fell on a Tuesday in 2001, Wednesday in 2002, the length of a day is also occasionally changed by the insertion of leap seconds into Coordinated Universal Time, owing to the variability of Earths rotational period. Unlike leap days, leap seconds are not introduced on a regular schedule, in the Gregorian calendar, the standard calendar in most of the world, most years that are multiples of 4 are leap years. In each leap year, the month of February has 29 days instead of 28, adding an extra day to the calendar every four years compensates for the fact that a period of 365 days is shorter than a tropical year by almost 6 hours. Some exceptions to this rule are required since the duration of a tropical year is slightly less than 365.25 days. For example, the years 1700,1800, and 1900 were not leap years, over a period of four centuries, the accumulated error of adding a leap day every four years amounts to about three extra days. The Gregorian calendar therefore removes three leap days every 400 years, which is the length of its leap cycle and this is done by removing February 29 in the three century years that cannot be exactly divided by 400. The years 1600,2000 and 2400 are leap years, while 1700,1800,1900,2100,2200 and 2300 are common years, by this rule, the average number of days per year is 365 + 1⁄4 − 1⁄100 + 1⁄400 =365.2425. The rule can be applied to years before the Gregorian reform, the Gregorian calendar was designed to keep the vernal equinox on or close to March 21, so that the date of Easter remains close to the vernal equinox. The Accuracy section of the Gregorian calendar article discusses how well the Gregorian calendar achieves this design goal, the following pseudocode determines whether a year is a leap year or a common year in the Gregorian calendar. The year variable being tested is the representing the number of the year in the Gregorian calendar. Care should be taken in translating mathematical integer divisibility into specific programming languages, if then else if then else if then else February 29 is a date that usually occurs every four years, and is called leap day. This day is added to the calendar in leap years as a corrective measure, the Gregorian calendar is a modification of the Julian calendar first used by the Romans. The Roman calendar originated as a calendar and named many of its days after the syzygies of the moon, the new moon. The Nonae or nones was not the first quarter moon but was exactly one nundina or Roman market week of nine days before the ides and this is what we would call a period of eight days

Leap year
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A Swedish pocket calendar from the year 2008 showing February 29
Leap year
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February 1900 calendar showing that 1900 was not a leap year
Leap year
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In the older Roman Missal, feast days falling on or after February 24 are celebrated one day later in leap year.
Leap year
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A spinster eagerly awaits the upcoming leap day, in this 1903 cartoon by Bob Satterfield.

39.
Nebra sky disk
–
The Nebra sky disk is a bronze disk of around 30 centimetres diameter and a weight of 2.2 kilograms, with a blue-green patina and inlaid with gold symbols. These are interpreted generally as a sun or full moon, a lunar crescent, two golden arcs along the sides, marking the angle between the solstices, were added later. A final addition was another arc at the bottom surrounded with multiple strokes, the disk is attributed to a site near Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt, in Germany, and associatively dated to c.1600 BC. It has been associated with the Bronze Age Unetice culture, the disk is unlike any known artistic style from the period, and initially, was suspected of being a forgery, but now is widely accepted as authentic. The Nebra sky disk features the oldest concrete depiction of the cosmos worldwide, in June 2013 it was included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register and termed one of the most important archaeological finds of the twentieth century. Archaeological artifacts are the property of the state in Saxony-Anhalt, the hunters were operating without a license and knew their activity constituted looting and was illegal. They damaged the disk with their spade and destroyed parts of the site, the next day, Westphal and Renner sold the entire hoard for 31,000 DM to a dealer in Cologne. The hoard changed hands within Germany over the two years, being sold for up to a million DM. By 2001 knowledge of its existence became public, in February 2002 the state archaeologist Harald Meller acquired the disk in a police-led sting operation in Basel from a couple who had put it on the black market for 700,000 DM. The original finders were eventually traced, in a plea bargain, they led police and archaeologists to the discovery site. Archaeologists opened a dig at the site and uncovered evidence that supports the looters claims, there are traces of bronze artifacts in the ground, and the soil at the site matches soil samples found clinging to the artifacts. The disk and its accompanying finds are now held at the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle, the two looters received sentences of four months and ten months, respectively, from a Naumburg court in September 2003. They appealed, but the court actually raised their sentences to six and twelve months. The discovery site is a prehistoric enclosure encircling the top of a 252 metres elevation in the Ziegelroda Forest, known as Mittelberg, the surrounding area is known to have been settled in the Neolithic era, and Ziegelroda Forest contains approximately 1,000 barrows. The enclosure is oriented in such a way that the sun seems to set every solstice behind the Brocken, the treasure-hunters claimed the artifacts were discovered within a pit inside the bank-and-ditch enclosure. The precise dating of the Nebra skydisk depended upon the dating of a number of Bronze Age weapons and these axes and swords can be dated typologically to the mid 2nd millennium BC. Radiocarbon dating of a birchbark particle found on one of the swords to between 1600 and 1560 BC confirmed this estimate and this corresponds to the date of burial, at which time the disk had likely been in existence for several generations. A more recent analysis found that the used in the first phase was from the river Carnon in Cornwall

Nebra sky disk
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The Nebra sky disk
Nebra sky disk
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The swords found with the disk
Nebra sky disk
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Other associated finds: chisel, axeheads, bracelets
Nebra sky disk
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1) On the left the full moon, on the right the waxing moon, and between and above, the Pleiades

40.
Berlin Gold Hat
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The Berlin Gold Hat or Berlin Golden Hat is a Late Bronze Age artefact made of thin gold leaf. It served as the covering on a long conical brimmed headdress. It is now in the Neues Museum on Museum Island in Berlin, in a room by itself with an explanatory display. The Berlin Gold Hat is the best preserved specimen among the four known conical Golden hats known from Bronze Age Europe so far, of the three others, two were found in southern Germany, and one in the west of France. All were found in the 19th and 20th centuries and it is generally assumed that the hats served as the insignia of deities or priests in the context of a sun cult that appears to have been widespread in Central Europe at the time. The hats are also suggested to have served astronomical/calendrical functions, the Berlin Gold Hat was acquired in 1996 by the Berlin Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte as a single find without provenance. A comparative study of the ornaments and techniques in conjunction with dateable finds suggests that it was made in the Late Bronze Age, circa 1,000 to 800 BC. The Berlin gold hat is a 490 g gold hat with a long and slender conical shaft and its composition is very similar to the previously known Golden Cone of Ezelsdorf-Buch. At the bottom of the cone, the gold of the Berlin hat is reinforced by a 10 mm wide ring of sheet bronze. The external edge of the brim is strengthened by a twisted square-sectioned wire, the overall height is 745 mm. The hat was hammered from an alloy of 87. 7% Au,9. 8% Ag,0. 4% Cu and 0. 1% Sn. It was made of a piece, its average thickness is 0.6 mm. The cone is ornamented with 21 zones of horizontal bands and rows of symbols along all of its length, fourteen different stamps and three decorated wheels or cylindrical-stamps were used. The horizontal bands were decorated systematically with repeated similar patterns, the individual ornamental bands were optically separated traced ribs and bulges, mostly achieved with the use of cylindrical stamps. The bands of ornaments contain mostly buckle and circle motifs, most with a circular central buckle surrounded by up to six concentric circles, one of the bands is distinctive, It is decorated with a row of recumbent crescents, each atop an almond- or eye-shaped symbol. The point of the cone is embellished with a star on a background of decorative punches. An overview of the type and number of used in the ornamental zones is shown on the right. The meeting of the shaft with the foot is taken up by a wide vertically ribbed band, the foot is decorated with similar motifs to the cone itself

41.
Europe
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Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a population of about 740 million as of 2015. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast, Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the period, marked the end of ancient history. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era, from the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1955, the Council of Europe was formed following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill and it includes all states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, the EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The European Anthem is Ode to Joy and states celebrate peace, in classical Greek mythology, Europa is the name of either a Phoenician princess or of a queen of Crete. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, wide, broad and ὤψ eye, broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. For the second part also the divine attributes of grey-eyed Athena or ox-eyed Hera. The same naming motive according to cartographic convention appears in Greek Ανατολή, Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically, the match between Europas name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor. Next to these there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning darkness. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa

Europe
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Reconstruction of Herodotus ' world map
Europe
Europe
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A medieval T and O map from 1472 showing the three continents as domains of the sons of Noah — Asia to Sem (Shem), Europe to Iafeth (Japheth), and Africa to Cham (Ham)
Europe
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Early modern depiction of Europa regina ('Queen Europe') and the mythical Europa of the 8th century BC.

42.
Mathematics
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Mathematics is the study of topics such as quantity, structure, space, and change. There is a range of views among mathematicians and philosophers as to the exact scope, Mathematicians seek out patterns and use them to formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proof, when mathematical structures are good models of real phenomena, then mathematical reasoning can provide insight or predictions about nature. Through the use of abstraction and logic, mathematics developed from counting, calculation, measurement, practical mathematics has been a human activity from as far back as written records exist. The research required to solve mathematical problems can take years or even centuries of sustained inquiry, rigorous arguments first appeared in Greek mathematics, most notably in Euclids Elements. Galileo Galilei said, The universe cannot be read until we have learned the language and it is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. Without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth, carl Friedrich Gauss referred to mathematics as the Queen of the Sciences. Benjamin Peirce called mathematics the science that draws necessary conclusions, David Hilbert said of mathematics, We are not speaking here of arbitrariness in any sense. Mathematics is not like a game whose tasks are determined by arbitrarily stipulated rules, rather, it is a conceptual system possessing internal necessity that can only be so and by no means otherwise. Albert Einstein stated that as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, Mathematics is essential in many fields, including natural science, engineering, medicine, finance and the social sciences. Applied mathematics has led to entirely new mathematical disciplines, such as statistics, Mathematicians also engage in pure mathematics, or mathematics for its own sake, without having any application in mind. There is no clear line separating pure and applied mathematics, the history of mathematics can be seen as an ever-increasing series of abstractions. The earliest uses of mathematics were in trading, land measurement, painting and weaving patterns, in Babylonian mathematics elementary arithmetic first appears in the archaeological record. Numeracy pre-dated writing and numeral systems have many and diverse. Between 600 and 300 BC the Ancient Greeks began a study of mathematics in its own right with Greek mathematics. Mathematics has since been extended, and there has been a fruitful interaction between mathematics and science, to the benefit of both. Mathematical discoveries continue to be made today, the overwhelming majority of works in this ocean contain new mathematical theorems and their proofs. The word máthēma is derived from μανθάνω, while the modern Greek equivalent is μαθαίνω, in Greece, the word for mathematics came to have the narrower and more technical meaning mathematical study even in Classical times

43.
Scotland
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Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles, the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union also created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles, the legal system within Scotland has also remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law. Glasgow, Scotlands largest city, was one of the worlds leading industrial cities. Other major urban areas are Aberdeen and Dundee, Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europes oil capital, following a referendum in 1997, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, in the form of a devolved unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, having authority over many areas of domestic policy. Scotland is represented in the UK Parliament by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs, Scotland is also a member nation of the British–Irish Council, and the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland comes from Scoti, the Latin name for the Gaels, the Late Latin word Scotia was initially used to refer to Ireland. By the 11th century at the latest, Scotia was being used to refer to Scotland north of the River Forth, alongside Albania or Albany, the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass all of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages. Repeated glaciations, which covered the land mass of modern Scotland. It is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, the groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. The well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period and it contains the remains of an early Bronze Age ruler laid out on white quartz pebbles and birch bark. It was also discovered for the first time that early Bronze Age people placed flowers in their graves, in the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland, causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill, the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll, when the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after uncovering four houses

44.
Aberdeenshire
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Aberdeenshire is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. It takes its name from the old County of Aberdeen which had different boundaries. Modern Aberdeenshire includes all of what was once Kincardineshire, as well as part of Banffshire, the old boundaries are still officially used for a few purposes, namely land registration and lieutenancy. Aberdeenshire Council is headquartered at Woodhill House, in Aberdeen, making it the only Scottish council whose headquarters are located outside its jurisdiction, Aberdeen itself forms a different council area. Aberdeenshire borders onto Angus and Perth and Kinross to the south, Highland and Moray to the west, traditionally, it has been economically dependent upon the primary sector and related processing industries. Its land represents 8% of Scotlands overall territory and it covers an area of 6,313 square kilometres. Aberdeenshire has a prehistoric and historic heritage. It is the locus of a number of Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeological sites, including Longman Hill, Kempstone Hill, Catto Long Barrow. The area was settled in the Bronze Age by the Beaker culture, in the Iron Age, hill forts were built. Around the 1st century AD, the Taexali people, who have little history, were believed to have resided along the coast. The Picts were the next documented inhabitants of the area, and were no later than 800-900 AD, the Romans also were in the area during this period, as they left signs at Kintore. Christianity influenced the early on, and there were Celtic monasteries at Old Deer. Since medieval times there have been a number of paths that crossed the Mounth through present-day Aberdeenshire from the Scottish Lowlands to the Highlands. Some of the most well known and historically important trackways are the Causey Mounth, Aberdeenshire played an important role in the fighting between the Scottish clans. Clan MacBeth and the Clan Canmore were two of the larger clans, macbeth fell at Lumphanan in 1057. During the Anglo-Norman penetration, other families such as House of Balliol, Clan Bruce. When the fighting amongst these newcomers resulted in the Scottish Wars of Independence, in 1307, Robert the Bruce was victorious near Inverurie. Along with his victory came new families, namely the Forbeses and these new families set the stage for the upcoming rivalries during the 14th and 15th centuries

45.
Excavation (archaeology)
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In archaeology, excavation is the exposure, processing and recording of archaeological remains. An excavation site or dig is a site being studied, such a site excavation concerns itself with a specific archaeological site or a connected series of sites, and may be conducted over as little as several weeks to over a number of years. Numerous specialized techniques each with its features are used. Resources and other practical issues do not allow archaeologists to carry out excavations whenever and wherever they choose and these constraints mean many known sites have been deliberately left unexcavated. This is with the intention of preserving them for generations as well as recognising the role they serve in the communities that live near them. Excavation involves the recovery of types of data from a site. These data include artifacts, features, ecofacts and, most importantly, ideally, data from the excavation should suffice to reconstruct the site completely in three-dimensional space. The presence or absence of remains can often be suggested by remote sensing. Indeed, grosser information about the development of the site may be drawn from this work, the history of excavation began with a crude search for treasure and for artifacts which fell into the category of curio. These curios were the subject of interest of antiquarians and it was later appreciated that digging on a site destroyed the evidence of earlier peoples lives which it had contained. Once the curio had been removed from its context, most of the information it held was lost and it was from this realization that antiquarianism began to be replaced by archaeology, a process still being perfected. Archaeological material tends to accumulate in events, a gardener swept a pile of soil into a corner, laid a gravel path or planted a bush in a hole. A builder built a wall and back-filled the trench, years later, someone built a pig sty onto it and drained the pig sty into the nettle patch. Later still, the original wall blew over and so on, each event, which may have taken a short or long time to accomplish, leaves a context. This layer cake of events is referred to as the archaeological sequence or record. It is by analysis of sequence or record that excavation is intended to permit interpretation. As he remarked, waiting for animals to hunt represented 24% of the total man-hours of activity recorded, no tools left on the site were used, and there were no immediate material byproducts of the primary activity. All of the activities conducted at the site were essentially boredom reducers

46.
Mesolithic
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In archaeology, the Mesolithic is the culture between Paleolithic and Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used for areas outside northern Europe, Mesolithic has different time spans in different parts of Eurasia. It was originally post-Pleistocene, pre-agricultural material in northwest Europe about 10,000 to 5000 BC, in the archaeology of Northern Europe, for example for archaeological sites in Great Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, Ukraine, and Russia, the term Mesolithic is almost always used. In the archaeology of other areas, the term Epipaleolithic may be preferred by most authors, in the New World, neither term is used. Other authors use the term Mesolithic for a variety of Late Paleolithic cultures subsequent to the end of the last glacial period whether they are transitional towards agriculture or not, conversely, those that are in course of transition toward artificial food production are assigned to the Mesolithic. Therefore, care must be taken in translating Mesolithic as Middle Stone Age, subdivisions of earlier and later were added to the Stone Age by Thomsen and especially his junior colleague and employee Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae. John Lubbock kept these divisions in his work Pre-historic Times in 1865 and he saw no need for an intermediate category. When Hodder Westropp introduced the Mesolithic in 1866, as an intermediate between Paleolithic and Neolithic, a storm of controversy immediately arose around it. A British school led by John Evans denied any need for an intermediate, the ages blended together like the colors of a rainbow, he said. A European school led by Louis Laurent Gabriel de Mortillet asserted that there was a gap between the earlier and later, edouard Piette claimed to have filled the gap with his discovery of the Azilian Culture. Knut Stjerna offered an alternative in the Epipaleolithic, a continuation of the use of Paleolithic technology, the start and end dates of the Mesolithic vary by geographical region. Childes view prevails that the term covers the period between the end of the Pleistocene and the start of the Neolithic. If the Mesolithic is more similar to the Paleolithic it is called the Epipaleolithic, the Paleolithic was an age of purely hunting and gathering while in the Neolithic domestication of plants and animals had occurred. Some Mesolithic peoples continued with intensive hunting, others were practising the initial stages of domestication. The type of remains the diagnostic factor, The Mesolithic featured composite devices manufactured with Mode V chipped stone tools. The Paleolithic had utilized Modes I–IV and the Neolithic mainly abandoned the chipped microliths in favor of polished, not chipped, the first period, known as Mesolithic 1, followed the Aurignacian or Levantine Upper Paleolithic periods throughout the Levant. By the end of the Aurignacian, gradual changes took place in stone industries, small stone tools called microliths and retouched bladelets can be found for the first time. The microliths of this period differ greatly from the Aurignacian artifacts

Mesolithic
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Mesolithic microliths
Mesolithic
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Two skeletons of women aged between 25 and 35 years, dated between 6740 and 5680 BP, both of whom died a violent death. Found at Téviec, France in 1938.

47.
Goseck circle
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The Goseck circle is a Neolithic structure in Goseck in the Burgenlandkreis district in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Its construction is dated to approximately the 49th century BC, and it may thus be the oldest and best known of the circular enclosures associated with the Central European Neolithic. More controversially, it also may be one of the oldest Solar observatories in the world, however, the site is currently officially presented by the state archaeologists and the local association that looks after it as a ritual or cult structure. Its scientific use is purely speculative, the circle consists of a concentric ditch 75 metres across and two palisade rings containing entrances in places aligned with sunrise and sunset on the solstice days. The existence of the site was made public in August 2003, the site is located on farmland near Goseck, in the Burgenlandkreis of Saxony-Anhalt, between Naumburg and Weißenfels. The circle sits on a piece of land gradually rises towards the south, not far from where the Unstrut flows into the Saale. The circle was discovered in 1991 by Otto Braasch on an aerial survey photograph that showed circular ridges under a wheat field, the cropmarks were easy to see in a season of drought. The structures visibility also indicated an advanced state of erosion, to preserve the endangered remains, the Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt decided on an excavation. It cooperated with the Institute for Prehistocric Archaeology of the University of Halle-Wittenberg, françois Bertemes and Peter Biehl began a major excavation of the site in 2002. When archaeologists combined the evidence with GPS observations, they noticed that the two southern openings marked the sunrise and sunset of the winter and summer solstices, Bertemes and Biehl have continued the excavation for a few weeks each year. In 2004 a group from the University of California, Berkeley, since the end of the excavation, the site has been reconstructed. Archaeologists and state officials have rebuilt the wooden palisade of the circle using 1,675 oak poles with a height of 2.5 m, woodworkers worked with hand tools so that the wooden posts would look more authentic. The site was opened to the public on 21 December 2005, the site is surrounded by a circular v-shaped moat of up to 1.8 m depth. The soil was used to create a rampart on the outside, the diameter of the moat is 75 m measured from its external border. A double wooden palisade stood inside the moat, no traces of internal buildings were found. Entry to the site was via three main entrances to the north, southwest and southeast. In addition there were gaps in the palisades allowing access. The moat followed the three main entries outwards, the entrances in the inner palisade were narrower than those in the outer which in turn were narrower than the gap in the moat

Goseck circle
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Site of the Goseck circle. The yellow lines represent the direction the Sun rises and sets at the wintersolstice, while the vertical line shows the astronomicalmeridian
Goseck circle
Goseck circle
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A view inside the reconstructed wooden palisade of the circle.
Goseck circle
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Information boards at the entrance of the solar observatory of Goseck

48.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed

49.
Linear pottery culture
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The Linear Pottery culture is a major archaeological horizon of the European Neolithic, flourishing circa 5500–4500 BC. It is abbreviated as LBK, and is known as the Linear Band Ware, Linear Ware, Linear Ceramics or Incised Ware culture. The densest evidence for the culture is on the middle Danube, the upper and middle Elbe, and it represents a major event in the initial spread of agriculture in Europe. The pottery after which it was named consists of simple cups, bowls, vases, and jugs, without handles, but in a phase with lugs or pierced lugs, bases. The Eastern Linear Pottery Culture flourished in eastern Hungary, Middle and late phases are also defined. In the middle phase, the Early Linear Pottery culture intruded upon the Bug-Dniester culture, in the late phase, the Stroked Pottery culture moved down the Vistula and Elbe. A number of cultures ultimately replaced the Linear Pottery culture over its range, the culture map, instead, is complex. Some of the cultures are the Hinkelstein, Großgartach, Rössen, Lengyel, Cucuteni-Trypillian. The term Linear Band Ware derives from the potterys decorative technique, the Band Ware or Bandkeramik part of it began as an innovation of the German archaeologist, Friedrich Klopfleisch. The earliest generally accepted name in English was the Danubian of V. Gordon Childe, most names in English are attempts to translate Linearbandkeramik. Since Starčevo-Körös pottery was earlier than the LBK and was located in a contiguous food-producing region, much of the Starčevo-Körös pottery features decorative patterns composed of convolute bands of paint, spirals, converging bands, vertical bands, and so on. The LBK appears to imitate and often improve these convolutions with incised lines, hence the term, linear, the LBK did not begin with this range and only reached it toward the end of its time. It began in regions of densest occupation on the middle Danube, the rate of expansion was therefore about 4 km per year, which can hardly be called an invasion or a wave by the standard of current events, but over archaeological time seems especially rapid. The LBK was concentrated somewhat inland from the areas, i. e. it is not evidenced in Denmark or the northern coastal strips of Germany and Poland. The northern coastal regions remained occupied by Mesolithic cultures exploiting the then fabulously rich Atlantic salmon runs, evidently, the Neolithics and Mesolithics were not excluding each other. The LBK at maximum extent ranged from about the line of the Seine–Oise eastward to the line of the Dnieper, and southward to the line of the upper Danube down to the big bend. An extension ran through the Southern Bug valley, leaped to the valley of the Dniester, a good many C-14 dates have been acquired on the LBK, making possible statistical analyses, which have been performed on different sample groups. The 95. 4% confidence interval is 5600–4750 BC, data continue to be acquired and therefore any one analysis should be taken as a rough guideline only

Linear pottery culture
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Linear pottery: "The vessels are oblated globes, cut off on the top and slightly flattened on the bottom suggestive of a gourd."— Frank Hibben Note the imitation of painted bands by incising the edges of the band. Stroked Ware is shown in the upper left corner.
Linear pottery culture
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Linear Pottery culture
Linear pottery culture
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Danube lands near Vienna, by Johann Christian Brand, circa 1760
Linear pottery culture
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The Danube bend in Hungary